As children, we’re told the world is a magical place. Babies are delivered by storks. The tooth fairy harvests retired teeth in exchange for currency. Bunnies deliver candies in brightly covered baskets on a spring holiday. The world’s adults use magic to explain away the complexity of life.

In our work, confusing complexity is the natural result of an unchecked design and development process. Teams work hard, responding to customer requests through incremental improvement and feature enhancements, yet they often end up with a dismaying array of features that make users unhappy.

In this entertaining presentation, Jared will share some of his recent research into the craft of professional magic. He’ll demonstrate the parallels between the world of magical illusions and the world of digital design, comparing the similarities between professional illusions and some of today’s top design techniques.

In this presentation, you’ll learn how:

• Illusions performed by professional magicians follow the same design principles as your computer’s file system
• Designers can create specific mental models to eliminate perceived complexity
• Simple design tricks can make designs seem to be faster than they really are
• Whimsicality, attention, and functionality are essential elements to creating delightful experiences

You’ll see examples of illusions built into a variety of designs, including those from Microsoft, Flickr, Netflix, YouTube, and Google. Jared will also, possibly at his own peril, reveal the secrets from several magical illusions to show you just how the tricks were created and the effects are realized, giving you the ammunition necessary to build illusions into your own designs.

Speaker:  Jared Spool,  Founding Principal, UIE - User Interface Engineering

Date:         Tuesday, September 16, 2008
Cost:         To be announced
Time:        Approx. 6:00 – 8:30 pm
Location:  To be announced

Registration:  Members will receive advanced notification for registration.
NO EMAIL RSVPs ACCEPTED FOR THIS EVENT

About the Speaker
If you’ve ever seen Jared speak about usability, you know that he’s probably the most effective, knowledgeable communicator on the subject today. What you probably don’t know is that he has guided the research agenda and built User Interface Engineering into the largest research organization of its kind in the world. He’s been working in the field of usability and design since 1978, before the term “usability” was ever associated with computers.

Jared spends his time working with the research teams at the company, helps clients understand how to solve their design problems, explains to reporters and industry analysts what the current state of design is all about, and is a top-rated speaker at more than 20 conferences every year. He is also the conference chair and keynote speaker at the annual User Interface Conference, is on the faculty of the Tufts University Gordon Institute, and manages to squeeze in a fair amount of writing time.

Even though the technology has been around for decades, only now are we starting to see mass production and adoption of touchscreen and gestural devices for the public. Jeff Han’s influential 2006 TED demonstration of his multitouch system, followed by the launches of Nintendo’s Wii, Apple’s iPhone, and Microsoft Surface, have announced a new era of interaction design, one where gestures in space and touches on a screen will be as prominent as pointing and clicking.

But how do you create products for this new paradigm? While most of us know how to design desktop and web applications, what do you need to know to design for interactive gestures?

This introduction to designing gestural interfaces will cover the basics: usability and ergonomics; a brief history of the technology; some elemental patterns of use; prototyping and documenting; and how to communicate that a gestural interface is present to users.

DATE and TIME
Wednesday, September 17
6:15 - 7:00 networking and refreshments
7:00 - 8:00 presentation
8:00 - 8:30 Q&A and discussion
Important: Please plan to arrive no later than 6:45 p.m. to clear security and be seated

LOCATION
R/GA New York
350 West 39th Street
New York, NY 10018
http://rga.com

RSVP here: http://tinyurl.com/67ukh6
(Only those on the RSVP list will be admitted; please bring photo ID)
If you experience any problems with the URL, send email to: nyc.ixda (at) gmail (dot) com

ABOUT OUR SPEAKER
Dan Saffer is an experience design director for Adaptive Path. An international speaker and author, his writing on design has appeared in BusinessWeek and many online publications. His acclaimed book Designing for Interaction: Creating Smart Applications and Clever Devices has been called “a bookshelf must-have for anyone thinking of creating new designs” and has been translated into several languages. His new book on interactive gestures will be published by O’Reilly in October 2008.

Dan is a member of the Industrial Designers Society of America (IDSA) and the Interaction Design Association (IxDA). He received his Master of Design in Interaction Design from Carnegie Mellon University.

NYC Usability Professionals Association presents “UX Research at Google in NYC: Methods and Case Studies”.

Two members of Google’s User Experience team will outline Google’s UX design and research processes in New York City, then delve into two recent case studies where designs were influenced by some unique work
with metaphors, and where supporting underlying relationships with software can be the make-or-break predictor of success. (Full presentation description below.)

Speakers: Molly Stevens and Michelle Lee, UX Team, Google, Inc.

Please arrive by 6pm, to allow time to get through security. Photo ID required by security to enter building, and must match name on the registration list.

Cost:
Member or Non-member: $10
Event & 1-year membership: $20
Full-time students: $ 5 (please provide valid school ID)

Location: JPMorgan Chase
270 Park Avenue
(between 47th & 48th, on WEST side of street)
New York, NY 10017

Registration: NO EMAIL RSVPs ACCEPTED FOR THIS EVENT
Please purchase a guaranteed ticket at the event registration site.

Seats are limited and reservations are first come, first served. We advise you to register early, as previous events have sold out, and we had to turn people away at the door.

Presentation description:

Molly Stevens and Michelle Lee, two of Google’s UX Research team, will present a summary of Google’s UX design and research processes in New York City, and then highlight these processes in two case studies:

1. “Using Metaphors to Communicate Research Results with Impact”

Molly will discuss how using a metaphor helped engineering understand the social dynamics of a b2b application, causing them to fundamentally rethink the prioritization of features and some of the basic interactions.

2. “Getting on the Bandwagon: Critical Roles in Online Collaboration”

The biggest predictor of success is how software supports underlying relationships among group members. Not all collaborators are created equal; Michelle will explore critical roles and implications for design using Google Docs as a case study.

Time is allotted for Q&A after the presentations.

Throughout the electronic age, people have become accustomed to interacting with digital media indirectly, mediated through screens and peripheral devices. But now, as digital technology becomes invisibly embedded in everyday things, the ‘feeling’ of everyday things is also increasingly becoming embedded in digital technology.

In many senses, physical objects are becoming more important. In an immediate way, they can help us define new systems of relationships with digital information. Luke Williams, Creative Director at frog design, examines how perceptions and gestures formed through our experiences with physical products can effectively bring liberty to the relationship between brain, body, and digital media interface.

Luke will cover:

• how patterns and archetypes from product design now frame new ways for people to orientate themselves around information;

• the principle of stimulating one sense through another to create multi-sensory interactions; and

• new developments at the collision point between ‘real world’ objects and ‘digital interfaces’ — the touch screen.

SPEAKER: Luke Williams, Creative Director, frog design

WHEN: Thursday, July 24th
6:15 networking (refreshments served0
7:00 presentation
8:00 Q&Q and discussion

WHERE: Location details provided on RSVP

RSVP to: nyc-rsvp (at) ixda (dot) org

We live in a world where the little things really do matter. Each encounter — no matter how brief — is a micro interaction which makes a deposit or withdrawal from our rational and emotional subconscious. The sum of these interactions and encounters adds up to how we feel about a particular product, brand or service. Little things. Feelings. They influence our everyday behaviors more than we realize.

The speaker is  David Armano, VP Experience Design at Critical Mass. He has over 14 years experience in the communications industry with the majority of his time spent in digital marketing and experience design.  Aside from his presence on the Web, David is known as an evangelist for customer-centric strategies and acts as an advocate for the creation of meaningful interactions.
WHEN:
6:15 - 7:00 networking (refreshments served)
7:00 - 8:00 presentation
8:00 - 8:30 Q&A and discussion*

After the event we’ll move from micro interactions to macro interactions with some of the smartest, hippest, coolest and geekiest people around. Join us for drinks at Sweet & Vicious (5 Spring St between Bowery & Elizabeth).

WHERE:  SoHo; location details provided on RSVP

RSVP: Send e-mail to: nyc-rsvp (at) ixda (dot) org

When you think of TechSmith Morae, you probably think of testing things on a computer screen - like a software application or Web site. But what about testing the iPhone user’s experience? Could Morae speed up and simplify a whole range of testing methods, from paper prototyping to in-depth interviews to focus groups? Could it enable unmoderated testing?

The Morae development team is hard at work to support all these methods and approaches! In this session, they will pull back the curtain to give you a peek at what’s coming…and demonstrate specific use scenarios. As time and audience interest permits, he may also demo current Morae 2.0 features. We hope you can join us!

The speaker is Shane Lovellette, product manager for Morae and UserVue.

RSVP: http://www.eventbrite.com/event/115129355
We need your RSVP by 4PM on Monday May 19th to fulfill security requirements.
No email RSVPs accepted. The event will book up quickly.

For more information, NYC UPA

Location: JPMorgan Chase - Park Avenue
277 Park Avenue 17th Floor
(Between 47th & 48th on EAST side of Street)
New York, NY 10017
Map

Cost: Free

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)

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

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.

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.