Los Angeles, CA, USA

IxDA LA: Designing Social Interfaces - 5 principles, 5 practices, 5 antipatterns

The Los Angeles-area Interaction Design Association invite you to this event sponsored by MySpace and Microsoft.
This event is now full - post a message at the IxDA website to get on the waiting list.

Designing sites that foster user interaction and community-building is an invaluable skill for designers and developers in the post-web 2.0 era. On Dec 2, IxDA Los Angeles and MySpace present an evening with Erin Malone. Erin will be speaking about the book she recently completed with Christian Crumlish; “Designing Social Interfaces: Principles, Patterns and Practices for Improving the User Experience” Erin will share hard-won insights into what works, what doesn’t, and why.

The event is free with a festive spread of food and drinks thanks to sponsorship by Microsoft who will be on hand showing their Expression Blend suite.

If you are a designer, developer, or information architect for social media applications, this event cannot be missed!

Come out and mingle with your peers while enjoying tasty food, a fantastic talk about emerging social interfaces, and thought provoking ideas about how to design for the social landscape.
When:
Wednesday, December 2, 2009 at 7:00pm

Where:
MySpace
407 North Maple Drive
1st Floor
Beverly Hills, CA 90210

Park in the garage (lot is south side of the building).

RSVP:
This event is now full - post a message at the IxDA website to get on the waiting list.

Posted in Calendar | Event type | Los Angeles, CA, USA | Uncategorized
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LA-UX Meetup: Collaborative Tools: Best Practices and New Trends

The Los Angeles Chapter of ASIS&T and the Los Angeles User Experience Meetup Group invite you to:

Collaborative Tools: Best Practices and New Trends

What does it mean to collaborate in today’s Web 2.0 world? A panel of speakers pooled from LACASIST and the LA-UX (User Experience Meetup Group) will give a breakdown for best practices on keeping your head above water on collaborative documentation and team productivity. They will talk about collaboration tools and tips for better communication, every day productivity, and shared documentation. Some topics covered include using collaborative document sharing (Google Apps), online project management tools (Basecamp, etc.), and new patterns on online collaboration networks.

When:
Thursday, November 19, 2009 at 7:00pm

Where:
UCLA Law School
405 Hilgard Avenue
Room 1357
Los Angeles, CA 90095

RSVP:
At the event’s page on Meetup

Posted in Calendar | Event type | Local meeting | Los Angeles, CA, USA
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LA-UX Meetup: Sanzhar Kettebekov and “The new quantitative face of personas” (Santa Monica, CA)

• A novel methodology of integrating behavioral analytics into a User Experience cycle.
• Designed for online media that rely on display advertising .
• Employs behavioral profiles of the actual online audience to address drawbacks of traditional personas.
• Derived from standard web analytics data and augmented by custom research.
• Includes examples of precise targeting of audience segments for designing taxonomy, content layout, and presentation; also for developing audience and ad strategies.
• Covers implications of this approach for bridging the interdepartmental gaps between site’s user experience, product strategy, sales, and marketing.

About the presenter:
Dr. Kettebekov has over 13 years experience in behavioral and user experience research. His background includes establishing and directing User Experience program at the Tribune Corp. and global IT consulting for Fortune 500 clients. He held a research faculty position at MIT and he is a contributing author of the Encyclopedia of Human-Computer Interaction and other major scientific journals. His earlier work on advanced HCI has received wide recognition in the popular media including the New York Times and the team’s nomination for invention of the year by Discover Magazine.

When:
September 29, 2009 at 7:0pm

Where:
Yahoo! Santa Monica
2450 Broadway
Santa Monica, CA 90404

For more information and to RSVP, go to the event page at Meetup.com

Posted in Calendar | Los Angeles, CA, USA
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UX Book Club Meeting (Pasadena, CA)

Book to be discussed:
The Laws of Simplicity by John Maeda

When:
Tuesday, October 6, 2009 at 7:00pm

Where:
Art Center College of Design in Pasadena
Faculty Dining Room on the Hillside Campus
Click here for directions

Parking is free and light refreshments will be served.

RSVP:
Respond to the book club thread on LinkedIn.
(It says October 7 on the thread but the time has been changed to 10/6)

Posted in Book club | Calendar | Los Angeles, CA, USA
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TED 2010 (Long Beach, CA, USA)

TED 2010 will be the most ambitious yet, seeking out the voices, wherever they are in the world, best placed to help make sense of where we are and to point the way forward. Add extraordinary performances, wondrous art and immersive evening events, and you have a TED experience not to be missed.

So what does the world need? Stimulus? Recovery? Sure. But TED 2010 is digging deeper. Looking for the core ideas — and the core values — that will reinvigorate our quest for a better future, the 12 main sessions will be focused on one key attribute of what the world needs. Each session will continue to use TED’s special outside-the-box multi-disciplinary approach.

See ted.com for more information.

Posted in Calendar | Conference | Los Angeles, CA, USA
Tags: 2010conferences
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Scrum and User Experience Design (Los Angeles, CA)

The Scrum Club is putting on the following event. What is scrum?

Scrum provides us with a great framework for building our Scrum team, implementing the core agile practices and getting the inspect and adapt process started. But Scrum doesn’t provide much for the specific disciplines like programming, testing and User Experience. That’s where our coaches Patrick Neeman and Michael Vincent come in.

Join us as we explore how User Experience Design integrates with the Scrum process. We’ll see first hand how each type of activity fits into the Scrum cycles, and how our User Experience researchers, designers and artists integrate into a Scrum team.

We’ll lay a little foundation with a clear explanation of the core Scrum strategies and how typical User Experience activities map to the Scrum framework. Then we’ll get hands-on and gain experience by running a few live agile cycles to design the interface for an on-line version of Corporate Espionage!

By the end of the evening, you’ll have gained valuable insights into how to integrate User Experience activities into the Scrum process that you can take back and apply to your projects immediately.

Date and Time:
July 8, 2009 at 7:00 pm

Schedule:
5:45: Door Open. Check-in and informal networking. Dinner and refreshments provided. A vegetarian option is served.
6:45 - 7:00  Welcome and Announcements, Club Business, Introductions
7:00 - 8:30  Speaker Presentation and Q&A
8:30 - 8:45  Closing Comments

Location:
Blankspaces
5405 Wilshire, Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA

Free street parking is available about a block away.

Cost:
Tickets are $15 per person.

Get Tickets at Eventbrite

All funds raised from tickets go to support hands-on opportunities for members to try Scrum on practice projects for non-profits in the community and build leadership skills. We have a limited number of “scholarship tickets” available to university students and volunteers. Please contact amanda@scrumclub.org to get a student registration code or offer to volunteer at the event. We reimburse parking for our volunteers.

Posted in Calendar | Event type | Los Angeles, CA, USA
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May LA-UX Meetup: Conference Redux Mania (Glendale, CA)

Recaps from 3 conferences, 30 minutes each, followed by discussion and LA-UX 2nd birthday party with music and games.

• CHI (Amy Li). Covers eyetracking, face tracking for user
  research, new mobile interaction, social networking, and what’s cooking
  at MIT Media Lab, Google Lab, IBM Lab, and Microsoft Lab. See www.chi2009.org
• Web Application Summit (Susan Oslin)
• IA Summit (Chris Chandler & Lynn Boyden)
   

Date and Time:
Tuesday, May 27, 2009 at 6:45 pm

Location:
Glendale Central Library
222 E. Harvard St.
Glendale, CA 91205

Parking:
Marketplace parking structure, 120 Maryland, Glendale, CA 91205. Parking details.Parking validation via stamp inside library (on your way in or out).

Room:
Meeting held in 2nd floor auditorium.

Sponsor: AT&T Interactive (thank you!)

Posted in Calendar | Events | Los Angeles, CA, USA
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Los Angeles UX Book Club Meeting (North Hollywood, CA)

Did you know that the last two meetings were wildly popular and successful? UX professionals all over the world are flocking to UX Book Club, and one of our members told me this was one of the most valuable UX events he’d ever attended in LA! Just consider the opportunity for knowledge and insight you’ll lose if you don’t join us. Want to come but worried you won’t finish the book? Email Sarah at (nightlight [at] gmail.com) and we’ll make a bet on it.

Seriously, the book is a really interesting page-turner, and this meeting is going to be lots of fun. You won’t want to miss it. (Plus, HUGE is hiring – might be a good opportunity for you job seekers to scout out their digs.)

The Book:
Nudge: Improving Decisions about Health, Wellness, and Happiness.
Info about the book at Amazon.

Event Date and Time:
Wednesday, May 20, 2009
7:00 pm

Event Location:
HUGE
11135 Weddinton St.
North Hollywood, CA

RSVP:
Post to the Los Angeles UX Book Club Group on LinkedIn

Posted in Book club | Calendar | Events | Los Angeles, CA, USA
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LA UPA Chapter May Meetup (Santa Monica, CA)

This will be the third meeting of the Los Angeles Chapter of the Usability Professionals’ Association.

We have completed our informal phase, and will be moving into official UPA business. It is the expectation that all people participating in the planning portion of this event are UPA members, or will be willing to sign up as a UPA member at this event.

Our agenda will be as follows:

• Voting on UPA activities moving into the summer
• Creation of the official UPA Petition
• Organize a Constituting Meeting (This requires all participants to be UPA members)

During our last meeting, participating members agreed upon the following Interim officers for the duration of our Petition:

President - Stephen Ruiz (Rapp)
Vice President - Patrick Neeman (Usability Counts)
Secretary - Jason Van Marie (Disney)
Treasurer - Anthony Mauzy (Sidian Agency)

We will be changed for the use of the library facility. As such, I am asking that meeting participants donate what they can to help cover the cost of the facility. The cost for booking the room is $90.00, including and $100.00 deposit.

Any money collected in excess of this will go to the group fund.

Thanks for your response. I look forward to seeing all of you at this event.

-Stephen Ruiz

Event Date and Time:
Thursday, May 21, 6:30 pm

Location:
Santa Monica Library - Main Branch
601 Santa Monica Blvd.
Santa Monica, CA 90401

Cost:
$5  (to cover room rental) Please pay ahead of time by clicking on the PayPal link on the Meetup page.

RSVP:
Join the LA - UPA Meetup and RSVP from there.

Posted in Calendar | Events | Los Angeles, CA, USA | UPA
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Personas SUCK / Personas RULE! (Burbank, CA, USA)

The Los Angeles area IxDA and Yahoo! are hosting the next Interaction Design Association Event: “Personas SUCK / Personas RULE!” at Yahoo! in Burbank.

Personas. Do you use them? Are they useful or a waste of time? Our April event will feature persona experts who will explain why, when, and how personas can be used effectively in your interaction design process.

What do you do when you know you need personas, but you can’t seem to convince the client or stakeholders? Go rogue! We will workshop what to do when you have no time or resources.

Speakers:
- Jill Strawbridge
- Adam Korman

Come out and enjoy a lively evening and enjoy a tasty spread of snacks & drinks provided by our gracious hosts at Yahoo!
Date: April 29, 2009

Time: 7:00pm - 9:00 pm

Location:
Yahoo! Burbank
3333 Empire Ave.
Burbank, CA 91504

Parking Info:
Parking is free. Enter the parking structure from Empire Avenue and pull a ticket. Please be sure to bring the ticket to the lobby and turn it in at the Receptionist desk upon arrival. The elevator and stairs to get to the building will be to your left down the first aisle after you enter the structure. When you leave, there will not be an attendant. Just keep pulling forward and the gate will open.

RSVP:  Register at  IxDA’s new website and RSVP from there. There is a 115 person maximum.

Posted in Calendar | IxDA | Local meeting | Los Angeles, CA, USA
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