New York City, NY, USA

Interaction Design as Sculpture - IxDA (NYC, NY, USA)

It’s time for another NYC IxDA event! This month, Avenue A | Razorfish’s Andrew Green will talk about Interaction Design on platforms beyond the web.

So far, we have created mountains of Wireframes, Feature Specs, Personas and Scenarios to get the job done. But we are now at a point in Interaction Design/UX where we need to consider more than just designing usable, useful products and services for the web. People now have higher expectations for transparent, intuitive and simple ways to interact, research, shop and decide. At the same time, CEOs are starting to look at us to solve their hairiest business problems. Easy, right?

Andrew Green an Experience Designer at Avenue A | Razorfish, will explore these new challenges and explain some fresh ways to think and design for them including ideas on Mobile Convenience, Emotional Findability, Interaction Manners, and the general need for all Interaction Designers to stop making sculptures.

About Andrew Green:
Andrew Green combines a background in technology and an obsession with design to craft out innovative user experiences and digital strategies for clients including Ford, Lonely Planet, Yellow Pages Australia and Microsoft. He is an evangelist of interaction design and its potential to help transform businesses and create new ‘user experiences’ for consumers. Andrew can be found leading a team of Information Architects, Content Strategists and User Researchers at Avenue A | Razorfish in New York City. Otherwise, he’s at home in Melbourne, Australia barracking for the Collingwood Australian Rules Football Club.
Location: Times Square, details provided on RSVP (e-mail nyc-rsvp at ixda.org)

Posted in Calendar | Local meeting | New York City, NY, USA
Add the first comment »

WidgetWebExpo (New York, NY, USA)

WidgetWebExpo will look at one of the key emerging online trends: how to utilize the power of widgets to carry your brand to the world. Widgets offer huge potential as carriers of marketing, brand and advertising messages into social networks. Successful widgets are viral in nature can distribute your content or marketing message across the internet.

Several user experience topics will be covered:

• Micro Interactions: Can portable experiences go mainstream? (Panel)
• How we built a widget that can really interact with the users
• Design and UI for widgets

Posted in Calendar | Conference | New York City, NY, USA
Add the first comment »

Sketching and storytelling (IxDA) - (NYC, NY, US

The IxDA NYC April event is an Interaction08 redux. We’ll provide quick summaries to kick off a discussion on sketching and storytelling as pivotal tools for design.In his keynote, Bill Buxton convinced us that he views sketching as more than a design technique. At times, it can be a lifestyle choice. Sketches are used to explore a design problem: to generate alternatives, to elaborate upon them, and to winnow them. With this introduction, we’ll give some examples of projects in which sketching has come in handy and invite you to do so too.

We’ll also visit storytelling. The conversational nature of a well-constructed story makes for engaging designs. We’ll review and build on ideas reflected in talks by Sarah Allen, Chris Conley, and Gretchen Anderson. You can join in by telling a story that drove a successful project, or by recounting what happened when you tackled a project with a storytelling approach.

Whether you were at the Interaction08 (http://interaction08.ixda.org) or not, we want to hear your stories about how sketching and storytelling have made a difference in your design work. In advance of the redux, we have created a wiki where we encourage you to offer sketches, stories and more that we can share during this lively discussion. For a wiki invitation, just request wiki access when you reply.

Location to be announced on RSVP. Respond to nyc-rsvp at ixda dot org.

Posted in Calendar | IxDA | Local meeting | New York City, NY, USA
Tags: sketching | storytelling
Add the first comment »

Teamwork in Highly Dynamic Scenarios - UsabilityNJ (NYC, NY, USA)

Developing computerized support for time- and safety-critical teamwork, such as trauma resuscitation, is very challenging. To date, it is not even clear whether computer aids should support certain individuals, the overall team, or both, and in what manner.

This talk describes a study of teamwork in trauma resuscitation and the challenges concerning access to the setting, research methodology and data analysis. Preliminary insights about where in the process and how technologies can help  will also be discussed.

About the Speaker:
Aleksandra Sarcevic is a PhD candidate at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, majoring in Information Science at the School of Communication, Information, and Library Studies (SCILS). Her research interests are in the areas of human-computer interaction, computer-supported collaborative work, human information behavior, and information visualization.

Prior to Aleksandra’s current research on collaborative processes of trauma teams and trauma resuscitations, Aleksandra has been involved in research projects that investigated synchronous collaboration across dissimilar computer platforms, user interface design for searching emotional content in large video databases, and techniques and tools for evaluating interactive question-answering (QA) systems used by intelligence analysts.  Aleksandra’s work experiences include internships at Siemens’ User Interface Design Group and Google’s User Research Experience.
Location:
Siemens Corporate Research
755 College Road East
Princeton, NJ 08540-6632
Directions

Cost: Free. Donate as you wish for snacks.

RSVP: the event is open to all. However, as a courtesy to our host, please RSVP to rsvp@usabilitynj.org.

Posted in Calendar | Local meeting | New York City, NY, USA | UPA
Add the first comment »

Social Influence: Social Media & the Enterprise (UPA) (NYC, NY USA)

If you think social media is all about clever corporate marketing on Facebook or quirky videos on YouTube, you’re missing an opportunity to change your company’s entire culture. In fact, social media can affect how companies innovate, test ideas, market, recruit talent, measure performance, and interact with all their stakeholders. In his discussion “Going Social Now,” Shiv Singh, head of the Avenue A | Razorfish social media practice, will show you how the enterprise can use social media to craft more relevant and useful user experiences.

As part of his discussion, Shiv will discuss how the rise of social media has created a new form of marketing altogether, social influence marketing. He will also discuss research studies that help explain why some online communities are more successful than others. You will walk away from this engaging discussion with user experience strategies to help you design more successfully for the social web.

Registration: 6:00pm (refreshments served)
Please arrive by 6 to allow time to get through security.
Photo ID required by security to enter building.
It must match the name on the registration list.
Presentation: 6:30pm to 8:00pm (includes Q&A)
Networking: 8:00pm to 8:30pm
Dinner at a nearby restaurant: 8:30pm to whenever
(participants pay for their own dinner)

Location: Avenue A | Razorfish
1440 Broadway (Between 40th & 41st)
New York, NY 10018
Cost: NYC-UPA members: $10, Non-members: $20,Non-members with 1 year membership: $25, Full-time students: $5 (students please provide valid ID)
RSVP: http://nycupa20080423.eventbrite.com
NO EMAIL RSVPs ACCEPTED FOR THIS EVENT.

Posted in Calendar | Local meeting | New York City, NY, USA | UPA
Tags: nyc upa | Social Media
Add the first comment »

Documenting SDKs and APIs All Day Workshop - NY Metro STC (NYC, NY, US)

“Help wanted: Technical Writer to document SDKs. Must have Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Master’s degree in Technical Communication, plus five year’s experience in a similar position…”

In their dreams! In the real world, there are a lot more SDKs that need documenting than technical writers with the ideal qualifications. Documenting SDKs isn’t easy, and it’s not for everyone. But it is a highly sought skill. It’s work that will earn you respect, both from other writers and from programmers. And it’s one of the best-paying gigs in our industry.

Sure, it’s a tough job, but somebody’s got to do it. Why not you?

What will this workshop give me?
This 1-day workshop focuses on how to organize and produce SDK documentation, no matter what programming language the API is written in. You’ll learn why companies bother with SDKs, what programmers want and why sample programs are so important.

Act fast, space is limited and we expect this workshop to be full.

Location
Arno’s Restaurant
141 W 38th
NYC at Broadway

Cost
$200 STC Members/$240 Nonmembers

More information about the event

Posted in Calendar | New York City, NY, USA | STC | Training
Add the first comment »

‘Sketching’ Mobile User Interfaces - NYC UPA (New York, NY, US)

Learn how global trends in mobile computing will change the practice of user experience development from Michael Jefferson and Clay Wiedemann at frog design.
One of the greatest challenges in designing for mobile devices is gaining perspective early. What you see in a wireframe or a comp on the desktop and what you see when you hold the same design in your hand can often be an entirely different experience.

How can we move into this handheld environment earlier? What methods can we use to simulate the interactions and gain insight on usability? In this talk, frog design will share some techniques used to approach a recent multi-modal handset UI.

We will show examples of how simple dialogue, paper prototyping, video simulation and ‘wizard of oz’ environments were employed to gather concrete findings while allowing for maximum flexibility.

Location:
frog design
325 Hudson Street,
7th Floor (Entrance on Vandam)
New York, NY 10013
Cost:
NYC-UPA members: $10
Non-members: $20
Bon-members with 1 year membership: $25
Full-time students: $5 (students please provide valid ID)
RSVP: http://nycupa20080325.eventbrite.com
Please note ticket office will be closed by 4 p.m. Monday, March 24, 2008

More information about the Usability Professionals Association (NYC Chapter)

Posted in Calendar | Local meeting | New York City, NY, USA | UPA
Tags: mobile | sketching
Add the first comment »

UsabilityNJ’s First Design Slam

Please join us for UsabilityNJ’s first Design Slam. Contestants will participate in a fast-paced race to create the best design solution to a real-world problem. There’s an award with your name on it!

What’s a “design slam”?
Team up with other participants to solve a design problem as part of a full-fledged hypothetical project, including appropriate client-side deliverables. You will have an opportunity to interview key players on the client’s team. The session will conclude with proposal presentations from each of the groups to the “clients” and the assembled audience. The “clients” team will choose a winner, and the winning team will receive a plethora of praise from your peers and an award.

What’s in it for me?
This is a chance for interested IAs, designers, usability practitioners, developers and marketing professionals to get their hands dirty, working side-by-side with colleagues as they tackle tough business problems in a fun and sometimes crazy environment. Knowledge transfer, technique sharing, and a social atmosphere makes this session different from a “lecture-and- Powerpoint” presentation.

If you do not want to participate because you won’t be able to get to the meeting on time or a have severe case of social phobia, fear not! We would like to have an audience during this session to play the role of users, and help choose the winning team.

Whose big idea is this?
This idea is shamelessly stolen (with permission) from the IA Summit’s IA Slam.

When and where?
Exact location not yet announced.

If you would like to participate, please RSVP to giaimojosephine at yahoo.com. There are plenty of participation spaces and spectators are welcome!

Posted in Calendar | Local meeting | New York City, NY, USA | UPA
Tags: usabilitynj
Read the comment »

Talking to a Machine - IxDA (New York, NY, USA)

“Talking to a Machine” by Phillip Hunter, VP of application design and development at SpeechCycle.

Hate. Perhaps the strongest and darkest of our emotions. It pours out as most people describe how they feel about interactive voice response (IVR) systems. Why do people expect such a bad experience from these systems? And what are we doing about it?

Phillip Hunter, VP of application design and development at SpeechCycle, has over 14 years experience designing and building IVR systems, which use touch-tone keys and speech recognition for input. This talk will describe the environment that voice interaction designers work in, the tools that they use, and how designers address the inherent challenges of the medium. We will review the history of these applications and offer some thoughts for the future. Along the way, you can expect entertaining stories and recorded examples showing similarities with and differences from visually-enabled contexts. By the end of the talk, you’ll understand the advantages of IVR systems and how they are designed. Perhaps you’ll even feel some sympathy the next time you hear “Thank you for calling…”, or a recorded “Hello”.

WHERE: In lower Manhattan; full details provided on RSVP

RESERVATIONS: For more information, or to reserve your seat at the presentation, email nyc-rsvp (at) ixda (dot) org. In the subject line, please include “March 26 event”.

Posted in Calendar | IxDA | Local meeting | New York City, NY, USA
Tags: IVR
Add the first comment »

FUSE 2008 (New York City, NY, USA)

Every year, hundreds of design legends and corporate superstars converge at FUSE to experience a sense of community in the brand and design capital of the world - New York City. They choose FUSE for many reasons: to get inspired, to think, to laugh, to dissent, and to connect. The FUSE experience engages the senses and empowers people to tell authentic, emotional brand stories through strategic design.

One symposium track is focused on user experience: “Emotional branding and the quest for experiences”.

Posted in Calendar | Conference | New York City, NY, USA
Add the first comment »