For those of you who’ve been to the IA Summit in past years, this session will be familiar to you. This is an entire session dedicated to sharing a variety of deliverables for people to browse through, discuss and be inspired by. It’s a chance to see how others are communicating design to their coworkers and clients. Pick up some tips and tricks that your peers are using or participate to get feedback on your deliverables!

More information and to RSVP

When:
7:00 PM, July 24th, 2008

Where:
Yahoo! Santa Monica
2450 Broadway
First floor - Training room
Santa Monica, CA 90404

What can interaction designers learn from usability testing? Quite a bit! Usability testing is a great tool for improving and validating designs. Not every project requires usability testing and timeline and budget constraints often make it hard to accomplish. Nevertheless, most projects would benefit from at least some usability testing.

This IxDA Los Angeles Salon will be lead by interaction designers and usability practitioners who help us discuss the following questions:

* At what point in the interaction design process should usability testing be performed?
* What kinds of tests are most helpful for interaction design?
* Who should perform the tests? Labs vs. in-house.
* How to best analyze and interpret results to improve interaction design?

Before, during and after the lively discussion, we’ll have time to chill out and enjoy a tasty spread of food & drinks provided by our gracious hosts at HUGE LA.

100 person limit - RSVP today!

http://www.evite.com/app/publicUrl/UGTAXBYWVJYTYMZDEZFR/usability

WHEN
Wednesday, Jun 25th 7-9pm

WHERE
HUGE LA
11135 Weddington St., Suite 132
North Hollywood, CA, CA 91601 US

Come celebrate the first birthday of the LA-UX Meetup Group with others over food, drinks, music and Wii. You can RSVP at the LA-UX Meetup page (100 max). The event will be held at Avenue A | Razorfish on Wednesday, May 28 from 7:00 PM - 9:00 PM.

6060 Center Drive Suite 150
Los Angeles , CA 90045

• Press release
• Event website

CommunityNext will be held on Saturday, March 29th in Los Angeles, where speakers will discuss how different forms of social media are taking over the web. Attendees will learn how the web and media are changing - and what you can do to stay ahead of the curve.

Some of the UX related speakers include Aza Raskin - the president of Humanized and May Woo - user experience designer for SayNow.

IxDA LA Salon and HUGE present Methodology Madness. A good methodology can help you organize your thoughts and, ideally, help you design better products. However, with so many methodology flavors out there, it can be a bit confusing. Goal-directed design? Contextual design? Scenario-based design? It’s madness! What are the real differences between them anyway? More importantly, how effectively can you use them where you work? After all, your work environment largely shapes your process.

This IxDA LA Salon features a panel discussion with experienced designers who practice various methodologies and the folks who hire them. They’ll talk about how working in-house or for an agency can shape your process and illuminate clues to selecting the method that’s best for your project and environment.

*Food & Drinks provided by our gracious hosts at HUGE. *50 person limit - RSVP today:

Click here to RSVP while space lasts.

This event will take place on Wednesday, April 23 from 7:00 to 9:00 PM at

HUGE LA
11135 Weddington St., Suite 131
North Hollywood, CA 91601

The Los Angeles User Experience Meetup is having an event Tools of the UX Trade on Thursday, March 20, 2008 at 7:00 PM. The event will be held at LA Times Interactive.

The event will focus on software, methods, and tools used (or want to use) in your UX work. In addition to the lively discussions, food and beverages will be provided.

At the time of this posting, all 100 spots are full, but keep checking back, as spots usually open up closer to the event date from those who already RSVP’d but can’t make it.

As you are probably aware, the User Experience/Interaction Design community in Los Angeles is growing everyday. If you are already in the field or are interested in learning more about it then attending local UX related events around the area is a great place to start. I’ll be posting events as I hear about them as well as any other interesting Los Angeles UX related things I come across.

Let me take a brief moment to introduce myself - My name is Kenny Chen and I’m a User Experience Designer in Southern California having worked with everything from websites, enterprise software, consumer electronics, social networks, and mobile devices. I’ll be serving as a local ambassador for the Los Angeles area. The position was previously occupied by Jessyca Frederick and from what I hear, she did a wonderful job, so I hope I can do the same.

If you have any events or news that you think may be of interest to Los Angeles (or even Orange County), feel free to contact me and let me know.

The 2008 International Symposium on Collaborative Technologies and Systems, CTS 2008, will address, explore and exchange information on the state-of-the-art in collaborative enterprises, their modeling and simulation, design and use, and their impact. Participation is extended to researchers, designers, educators and interested parties in all CTS disciplines and specialties.

Topics in the “Human Systems and Collaboration” area:

• Coordination and Cooperation Mechanisms
• Group Characteristics and Social Factors in CE
• Cultural Aspects & Human Factors in Collaboration
• Human-machine Collaborative Interaction
• Awareness in Collaborative Systems
• Collaborative Human-Centered Systems
• Cognitive and Psychological Issues in Collaboration
• Affective, Emotive & Conative Aspects in Collaboration
• Interfaces for Collaborative Work
• Visualization of Collaborative Processes & Applications

The biennial Art Center Design Conference is a three-day international gathering of entrepreneurs, thought leaders, and innovators from many fields and disciplines. The 2008 Conference, Serious Play, will explore the essential role of play in business, the arts, science, storytelling, technology, and more.

Speakers include:

• Michael Curry, Puppet Master
• Elizabeth Diller, Visionary Architect
• David Macaulay, Author, Illustrator, Storyteller
• John Maeda, Digital Guru
• Paula Scher, Graphic Designer and Artist
• Irene Au, Director of User Experience, Google Inc.
• Tim Brown, Design Thinker, IDEO President and CEO