Pittsburgh, PA, USA

IXDA Pittsburgh : Current Interaction Design and IA topics (Pittsburgh, PA)

Friday, April 18th, 2008 by Michele Marut
April 24, 2008
6:30 pmto8:00 pm

Date: April 24 2008

Location: Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA

About This Event

Date: Thursday, April 24 2008

Time: 6:30 PM Refreshments & Networking

7:00 PM Presentations

8:00 PM Optional trip to the Walnut Grill in Shadyside for drinks

Place: Daedalus Excel’s Offices, 4914 Baum Blvd, 15213

Map: http://www.daed.com/contact_maps.tt2

RSVP: An RSVP is not required, but it helps us to have an idea of the head count for the venue. Please send RSVPs to mmarut15 at gmail.com

Local IXDA members will be giving brief presentations on a timely IXD topic for the purpose of engaging the group in a discussion.

Sofia Mirza, MDes ‘07, Communication & Information Design, will present her Visualization Toolkit: Tools for Visualizing Qualitative Information for Understanding

Peter Bird, MDes ‘08, Communication & Information Design, will present his ongoing thesis work on Designing for Travel: An Analysis of Public Transportation System Information Aids

Don Charlton from Wall-to-Wall Studios will present his Lessons for Interface Designers
:A series of quick, easily-digestable ideas

William Bernstein from Daedalus Excel will present a case study on the Development of an Interface for Home Dialysis

Refresh Pittsburgh Meeting (Pittsburgh, PA)

Wednesday, March 19th, 2008 by Michele Marut
April 1, 2008
7:00 pmto8:00 pm

With the Easter holiday arriving a bit early this year, it’s resulting in scheduling the next Refresh Pittsburgh meeting one week later than usual. Our next meeting will at 7:00 pm on Tuesday, April 1st at the Creative Treehouse in Bellevue.

To start the evening, Pat Collins will present “CakePHP: Rapid application development with PHP”.

Why learn a new programming language when you can use your existing PHP skills to become a better coder and increase your productivity?

Let Pat show you how to build a blog application in no time, and how you can help!

Then, Val Head will be presenting “A, B, C, D-esign!”

Val’s presentation will be a discussion of the basic building blocks of design as they apply to designing fo the web. She’ll show examples of concepts like colour, typography and hierarchy and talk about how these fit in to a web page design.

As usual, if you would like to show off a recent project or pose a few questions to our group, please let us know and we’ll fit you in.

We’ll make sure to provide a good supply of coffee and cookies and other sweets to get you through the night.

Please RSVP to let us know if you will be joining us. We need to make sure we have enough seats and most importantly, coffee and cookies!

And by all means, please forward this invitation to anyone you like.

For detailed information: http://www.refreshpittsburgh.org/

Tucker Viemeister lecture (Pittsburgh, PA, USA)

Monday, March 17th, 2008 by Michele Marut
April 1, 2008
6:30 pmto8:00 pm

Tuesday, April 1, 2008 | 6:30 pm
MAYA / General Dynamics | Viz
2730 Sidney Street, South Side Works

Please join AIGA Pittsburgh and the Western Pennsylvania chapter of IDSA for an evening with Tucker Viemeister.

Viemeister is best known for his work at some of the world’s more innovative design firms. He co-founded Smart Design with Davin Stowell in 1985, where the team designed the acclaimed OXO Good Grips universal kitchen tools. In 1997, he teamed up with Hartmut Esslinger of frog design to launch frog’s New York studio, working on branding, packaging, and industrial design for clients such as Motorola and Unilever. And from 1999 to 2001, Viemeister headed Razorfish’s R&D group, working on design projects for corporate giants Nike, Procter & Gamble, and Vodafone.

Now as LAB Chief at Rockwell Group - a cross-disciplinary architecture and design firm - he spreads his creativity on projects for clients like Coca-Cola, JetBlue, Viking, Gap, McDonald’s, and Sheraton.

http://rockwellgroup.com/

FREE for AIGA and IDSA members
Non-members: $5

Refresh Pittsburgh (Pittsburgh, PA)

Friday, February 15th, 2008 by Michele Marut
February 26, 2008
7:00 pmto9:00 pm

It’s time to kick off the new year for Refresh Pittsburgh. We’re excited about some of the topics we have lined up, and we’re going to jump right in with our next meet-up.

Our next meeting will at 7:00 pm on Tuesday, February 26 at the Creative Treehouse in Bellevue.

Cynthia Closky from Big Big Design will be presenting “Google-Friendly Blogging in Five Easy Steps.” She’ll be discussing basic search engine optimization for WordPress — and by extension, other blog tools. There are lots of misconceptions about SEO in the first place, and there are some simple steps one can take to improve one’s search ranking.

Next, Jeff Hunter, organizer of Devhouse Pittsburgh will be presenting introduction to Ruby. Jeff will show us what it is, why you may want to consider using it for your next project. When I asked Jeff if was interesting in presenting, I asked him to explain “What the heck is ruby and why do I keep hearing about it (and why do people yell at me when I confuse ruby and ruby on rails?!?)” So you can expect to get answers to those questions too!

Our friends at O’ Reilly Publishing have provided us with a few Ruby books as giveaways for the night as well.

Please RSVP to info@refreshpittsburgh.org

CONTEXT: AIGA Pittsburgh’s Annual Design Competition (Pittsburgh, PA, USA)

Friday, February 15th, 2008 by Michele Marut
March 27, 2008
6:00 pm

Exhibit Opening Reception: Thursday, March 27, 2008
Doors open at 6:00 pm. Awards ceremony at 8:00 pm. Enjoy the company of your peers, a spectacular gallery, food, libations, and the best work done by our region’s designers. Juried by a panel of nationally recognized judges, CONTEXT spotlights the very best of Pittsburgh’s graphic design, advertising, digital media, and student work produced over the past year.

Opening Reception
Three Rivers Arts Festival Gallery
937 Liberty Avenue, Pittsburgh, PA 15222

Admission: $20
Members: $15
Students: $10
Student members: $5

Jakob Trollbäck lecture (Pittsburgh, PA, USA)

Friday, February 15th, 2008 by Michele Marut
March 6, 2008
7:00 pmto8:00 pm

Thursday, March 6, 2008
7:00 pm

A self-taught DJ-turned-designer from Sweden, Jakob Trollbäck is an acknowledged leader in network branding and motion graphic design. He is the founder and creative director of New York-based Trollbäck + Company, a visual and conceptual creative studio producing expressive and purposeful graphics, design and live action for advertising, broadcast, and entertainment.

http://trollback.com/

Carnegie Mellon School of Design
Breed Hall, MMCH

ICEC 2008 (Pittsburgh, PA, USA)

Saturday, January 19th, 2008 by Conference Editor
September 25, 2008toSeptember 27, 2008

The 7th International Conference on Entertainment Computing, ICEC 2008, is an international forum for the exchange of experience and knowledge amongst researchers and developers in the field of entertainment computing. This conference provides an interdisciplinary forum for advanced research and helps to determine the state of the art.

Topics include:

  • Interactive Design for Entertainment
  • Aesthetics, Ontology and Social Reflection
  • Art, Design and Novel Media
  • Augmented, Virtual and Mixed Reality
  • Computer Games and Game Based Interfaces
  • Social and Human Factors of Entertainment
  • Interactive Digital Storytelling, and Interactive Tele-Vision
  • Pervasive Entertainment and Game-Playing
  • Robots and Cyber Pets
  • Sound, Music, Creative Environments

IXDA Pittsburgh Wire Farm (Pittsburgh, PA, USA)

Friday, January 18th, 2008 by Michele Marut
February 5, 2008
7:00 pmto8:00 pm

Date: Tuesday, February 5, 2008
Time: 7 pm
Place:

Viz / General Dynamics C4 Systems
SouthSide Works
Building 2, Suite 310
2730 Sidney Street
Pittsburgh, PA 15203

http://www.mayaviz.com/web/about/reach/about_reach.mtml

Go to the 3rd Floor. Look for the big VIZ sign on the wall

Description:

We will feature two 20-minute presentations from local designers, each showing off current best practices.

  • Julie Carlini will present a demo on prototyping with Axure RP
  • David Bishop will give Illustrator tips and tricks

Hope to see you there!

Michele Marut
IXDA LA for Pittsburgh

Software Saturday: Acrobat 8 and Captivate Program (Pittsburgh, PA, USA)

Wednesday, January 9th, 2008 by Michele Marut
January 26, 2008
9:00 amto4:00 pm

The Pittsburgh Chapter STC will host a Software Saturday workshop from 9:00 AM to 4:00 PM on January 26, 2008 at ProTech Training in Monroeville, Pennsylvania. The workshop will focus on Adobe Acrobat and Captivate.

Date: Saturday, January 26, 2008
Place: ProTech Training, Monroeville
Time: 9:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m.
Cost: $45 student/unemployed; $60 STC members; $75 non-members
R.S.V.P. by January 21 to Bryce Walat at walat_bryce@msn.com or 412-779-1795. Include your name, phone number and e-mail address
Speaker: Alan Houser
Introduction to Adobe Captivate Software simulations are becoming increasingly popular in technical communication. Adobe Captivate is an easy-to-use, yet powerful tool for developing and publishing software demonstrations, interactive software simulations, and scenario-based training. In this interactive, hands-on workshop, you will learn to:

  • Record effective software demonstrations.
  • Create interactive software simulations.
  • Add audio to Captivate projects.
  • Choose appropriate Captivate settings.
  • Edit and publish Captivate projects.


Introduction to Adobe Acrobat 8
Many technical communicators are not fully aware of the capabilities of Adobe Acrobat Standard and Professional versions. In this interactive, hands-on workshop, we will learn to:

  • Optimize PDFs for online viewing. Add navigation buttons and bookmarks.
  • Create interactive Acrobat forms — a great way to get feedback from users!
  • Use Acrobat’s review and annotation tools for online electronic reviews.
  • Use and set Acrobat document security.
  • Understand Acrobat settings and properties for publishing.

Alan Houser is president of Group Wellesley, Inc., a Pittsburgh-based firm that provides consulting, training, and application development services to support single-source publishing, electronic publishing, and XML-based publishing. Alan is an Adobe Certified Instructor in FrameMaker and Acrobat, and provides training and consulting for clients across America and Europe.

AIGA [X]posed Studio Tour x.2: Downtown (Pittsburgh, PA, USA)

Saturday, January 5th, 2008 by Michele Marut
January 24, 2008
4:45 pmto10:00 pm

Paradiso Group / Giant Ideas / Euphoria
Thursday, January 24, 2008
Be a fly on the wall at some of Pittsburgh’s premier studios. The South Side Studio Tour in November was a huge success. For the second tour of the series, we’re checking out the studio spaces of Downtown Pittsburgh. This is the perfect opportunity to see work in progress, learn about company histories, and chat up the pros.

STUDIO TOUR x.2 SCHEDULE

REGISTRATION: 4:45pm – 5:15pm, Paradiso Group, 200 First Avenue, Suite 250
STUDIO 1: 5:15pm – 6:00pm, Paradiso Group
STUDIO 2: 6:15pm – 7:00pm, Giant Ideas/Euphoria
STUDIO 3: 7:15pm – 8:00pm, Euphoria/Giant Ideas
WRAP-UP PARTY: 8:00pm – 10:00pm, TBA
REGISTRATION
There are only 40 spots available on this tour and reservations are required. Reserve your spot by January 18 by filling out the registration below. Registration fees will be collected on the day of the tour – cash ONLY.

Don’t forget to mark your calendar for Studio Tour x.3: The Strip District in March!

http://pittsburgh.aiga.org/xposed/