Announcements

Post-graduate in User-Centered Design

I’m coordinating a post-graduate in User-Centered Design into Universidade Positivo in Curitiba - Brazil.
The course brings the experience of designers and engineers of CESAR, professionals/researchers from Curitiba and brings a professional discuss for the area of interaction design and user experience.The path chosen is the user-centered design, the same used by renowned companies such as IDEO, CESAR, Apple, Intel, IBM, Nokia, Adaptive Path and any others.
Classes will to start in March 2010 and will be fortnightly (Friday and Saturday).The course is intended for the training of professionals involved in the process of developing new services and technology products. The gap is to apply theory and practice in a balanced and focused on research, development, prototyping and testing with users.
Presentation of post-graduate: http://www.slideshare.net/efileno/psgraduao-design-centrado-no-usurio
More information: http://www.posup.com.br/curso.asp?id=258
Cheers!
Érico Fernandes Fileno, M.Sc.
Interaction Designer
http://ericofileno.wordpress.com
http://www.slideshare.net/efileno
@efileno

Posted in Announcements | Curitiba, Brazil | Training
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User Experience Evaluation Methods

Contribute a user experience evaluation method or tool you think is state-of-the-art for a research study. The method or tool should be used to evaluate designs (instead of creating them).

• Fill out this survey for each method. It should take about 15 minutes of your time to add to the understanding of the user experience field. Thanks!

More about the research project:

High quality user experience (UX) has become a central competitive factor of product development in mature consumer markets. Although the term user experience (or UX) is widely used, there is a lack of practical methods and tools for iterative UX evaluation.

We are conducting a survey to develop an overview of State-of-the-art User Experience Evaluation Methods (UXEM). The survey is an improved version of the template we used at CHI 2009.

If you would like to share with us a UX evaluation method or tool that you have applied or simply know, please complete this survey consisting of 20 questions. Five questions are on background data and 15 on the method/tool. It will take you about 15-20 minutes to complete it. Please answer the questions for one single method. In case you have more than one UXEM to share, please enter each one as a new instance of the survey.

The method/tool should focus at investigating aspects of how users experience the use of a system, rather than on usability in terms of objective performance (e.g., task effectiveness) only. Moreover, it should be a method/tool to evaluate designs or design proposals, rather than a creative method/tool aiming at inventing new designs.

Results of this survey will be combined with those from the UXEM08 workshop at CHI 2008 (poster, PDF) and the Special Interest Group session at CHI 2009 (overview, PDF). The aggregated outcomes will be published and will then be disseminated through appropriate venues in due time.

If you would like to receive an overview of the collected methods, you can leave your email address at the end of the survey.

This research is a cooperative effort between:

• Arnold Vermeeren (Delft University of Technology, The Netherlands)
• Virpi Roto (Nokia Research Center, Finland)
• Kaisa Väänänen-Vainio-Mattila (Tampere University of Technology, Finland)
• Marianna Obrist (University of Salzburg, Austria)
• Effie Law (University of Leicester, United Kingdom)
• Jettie Hoonhout (Philips Research, The Netherlands)

Again, please contribute to this research project by filling out this survey for a user experience evaluation method or tool. Thanks!

Posted in Announcements | News
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Help us help you

We are trying to learn about the kinds of services that we can provide to help user experience people connect and succeed in the workplace.

You can help us by answering this short survey. You can enter your name in a drawing to win 4 free Rosenfeld Media books as well.

Thanks in advance and feel free to pass on this invitation to fill out the survey.

Posted in Announcements | News
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Research project: Designers of Ubiquitous Computing Wanted

The Designers’ Ubiquitous Computing Testbed (DUCT) research group (led by Asst. Prof. Mark Newman) at the University of Michigan School of Information is conducting research on the practices of experience designers working at the forefront of technology.

We are currently looking for designers who are willing to talk to us about projects they have done that involve designing “off the desktop” systems (i.e., mobile and place‐specific). If you have, or are currently, designing a system that is mobile, embedded, tangible or otherwise not a traditional desktop computer, we would love to speak with you about your work. Similarly, if you have or are working on a project that involves computing that takes into account the location, activity or presence of users then we would also like to speak with you about your work.

If you’re interested or have more questions, please contact Jared Bauer (jaredsb@umich.edu).

Posted in Announcements
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UXnet survey

UXnet currently has a number of initiatives underway, and part of our plan for 2008 includes a questionnaire to better understand who our stakeholders are. We have designed a very quick survey that we invite you to complete.

• Check out the survey

This survey will take you less than 5 minutes to complete, but will give the Board of Directors a good overview of some key information. The survey is completely anonymous, and no answers can be attributed to any individual.

Also, we are looking for information from across the industry. We are therefore asking everyone to forward the survey link to people they think are involved in a related discipline, or who have interest in user experience, but who may not be directly involved in the UXnet organization itself. Our intention is to collect information concerning everyone related to this field, in order that UXnet may effectively align itself for future growth and success.

We very much appreciate your time & effort. Thank you.

Posted in About UXnet | Announcements | News
Tags: survey
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UXnet Medical Industry Group

MINNEAPOLIS-ST.PAUL, MN (U.S.) - September 7, 2008 - The User Experience Network (UXnet), the only international not-for-profit organization dedicated to building the user experience industry, announced a special interest group for the medical industry today. Under the leadership of Suzanne Currie, a long-time connector in the user experience community and an active practitioner in the medical industry, the group will connect professionals who are involved with or interested in user experience throughout healthcare, for the purpose of growing a dedicated community.

“The medical industry is faced with some of the greatest user experience challenges today,” said Currie. “We hope to bring together top practitioners into a dedicated professional group that provides assistance and support to one another while injecting leadership to the practice of user experience in the medical area.”

Initially a virtual effort, the UXnet Medical Industry Group hopes to use online connection and participation as a springboard toward creating physical community and professional relationships. Among other tools, the popular professional website LinkedIn will provide early networking infrastructure. Interested participants can sign up for the group on LinkedIn.

“The healthcare industry touches some of the most personal and important interactions that people have in their lives,” said Dirk Knemeyer, President of UXnet. “It is also one of the largest growth industries in the world and truly demands the attention of user experience as a professional discipline. We hope this group is able to provide an invaluable service to the many practitioners who are hard at work solving these very personal and complicated design problems.”

UXnet creates effective, functional and strategic networks to enable cross-disciplinary collaboration between user experience professionals. We connect people, organizations, resources and ideas to enable the growth and maturation of User Experience as a practice, a community and eventually a discipline. For more information about UXnet, please contact Keith Instone, instone [at] uxnet.org.

Posted in Announcements | Medical | News
Tags: linkedin | Medical
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Survey: IA in the real world

Patrick Kennedy is is running an online survey on how people go about practicing Information Architecture in the real world, in particular how agencies “do IA”.

Pat wants to both confirm and challenge his own understandings of:

• the way agencies work and how IA fits into their processes
• who it gets done by
• how it might be possible to give agencies the skills they need to perform better in this regard

The survey will take approximately 5-10 minutes to complete and he’s giving away prizes to boot.

You’ll find the survey at: http://www.gurtle.com/survey/index.php?sid=61824

If you don’t work in an agency, you can still help me out by forwarding it on to your clients, peers and friends who do work in agencies.

The survey will run until the end of September.

Posted in Announcements
Tags: ia | survey
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Free Accessibility Report from Nielsen Norman Group

NNG, as a holiday gift, is offering a free report on accessibility which can be downloaded from their site.

According to the summary, the report contains:

• Results of usability tests of 19 websites with users with several different types of disabilities who are using a range of assistive technology:
  • blind users using screen readers
  • blind users using Braille readers
  • low-vision users using screen magnifiers
  • motor-impaired users
• Test data collected mainly in the United States, with some additional studies in Japan to ensure the international applicability of the recommendations
  • A total of 104 users participated in the usability studies:
  • 84 users with disabilities
  • 20 non-disabled users who served as a control group
• 75 detailed design guidelines

Good reading and happy holidays to everyone!

Posted in Announcements | NN/g
Tags: Accessibility | report
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