UXnet provides coordination and leadership on a local level, thanks to the hard work of our Local Ambassadors: a passionate group dedicated to facilitating collaboration between people, organizations, and resources. Below are the most recent postings from our Local Ambassadors. If your locale is not listed (on the right), then check out the local chapter directories of various UX-related professional organizations to find UX professionals near you.
Fortaleza, located in the northeastern corner of Brazil, is the capital city of the State of Ceará and one of the five biggest cities of the country. Inside and outside Brazil, Fortaleza is mostly recognized by the combination of its natural beauties (sun, beaches, wind), great nightlife, delicious culinary, rich culture and the very peaceful and friendly people.
Regarding UX, Fortaleza researchers and professionals have good interest and participation in the Brazilian HCI/UX scene. In 2002, we hosted the 5th Symposium on Human Factors in Computer Systems (IHC2002), the leading Brazilian forum for the exchange of ideas and information about human-computer interaction. And recently, in late 2008, we’ve got together to create an on-line community called IHCeara, with broad participation of local researchers, students, professionals and other interested people. Our first result as community was the organization of WUD 2008, which had good acceptance.
More about us (both in portuguese):
Our group page: http://groups.google.com/group/ihceara
Our group blog: http://www.ihceara.org
Make us a visit!
2008 proved to be a great year for User Experience in Los Angeles and it is sure to grow in the new year. If you are looking to get involved, here are 3 great places to start in the Southern California area:
On Monday, September 29th, 2008, a few user-centered pioneers at Blackbaud will be holding a constituting meeting to begin a charter Chapter of UPA. For more information, please contact Shannon at shannon.graf@blackbaud.com .
Hi folks! As World Usability Day 2008 in Recife is coming soon, we made a list of all events organized - or somehow supported - by UXrecife during 2007 and 2008. Here they are!
2007
- Inaugural meeting of UXrecife (January 25th at Paco Alfandega Shopping)
- Meeting: “What’s User Experience?” (March 21th at Softex)
- Videoconference with Amyris Fernandez: “Interaction Design, Going Beyond Usability” (April 2nd at C.E.S.A.R)
- Exhibition of GEL Conference 2006 videos (April 24th at C.E.S.A.R)
- Video exhibition about Paper Prototyping (May 30th at C.E.S.A.R)
- Meeting: “Introducing Canola” (June 27th at Nokia INdT)
- Meeting with professor Robson Santos (July 11th at C.E.S.A.R)
- Meeting: “What’s User Research?” (July 25th at C.E.S.A.R)
- Meeting with professor Amanda Meincke (August 24th at C.E.S.A.R)
- Meeting: “Revisiting INTERACT 2007″ (September 26th at Softex)
- Event: “World Usability Day 2007 in Recife” (November 8th at Livraria Cultura)
- Meeting: “Form Usability” (November 28th at C.E.S.A.R)
- Meeting with Acesso Digital (December 6th at Softex)
2008
- Meeting with professor Maria de Fatima Vieira: “Product Usability, a competitive differential” (March 19th at C.E.S.A.R)
- Meeting: “Regional and national UX industry” (April 30th at Marista College)
- Event: “1st Exhibition of Interaction Design Projects in Recife” (June 26th at Marista College)
- Meeting with Gustavo Morais: “Anthropology, Ethnography and Design” (August 20th at C.E.S.A.R)
- Meeting with professor Cristian Rusu: “HCI in the Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Valparaiso, Chile” (August 25th at C.E.S.A.R)
And get ready for WUD 2008 in Recife! UXrecife core team is organizing the last details for our second edition of World Usability Day in Recife :) From
If you’re a full time student then you can now attend the Oz-IA 2008 conference for the very affordable rate of $198.
Additionally, Oz-IA are offering full time students workshops for just $77. Workshop places are limited however and this offer is only on a stand-by basis .. but not to worry most of the workshops have plenty of spaces left at this time.
If you are a full-time student just register as normal using discount code: “student”
hello, from the Great State of Maine™ ~
Okay…the ™ may be tongue in cheek, but Maine is a fantastic state, with a whole lot of UX going on! For example…
INTEREST SURVEY
MaineUX administered an interest survey to MaineUX discussion group subscribers–hauling in a 50% response rate! Respondents indicated interest in the following event types:
No surprise, but the majority of MaineUX respondents are “likely” or “very likely” to attend events in Maine closest to where they live and/or work (i.e., within a 1-hour drive). The top 3 locations cited as “most likely” or “likely” to draw attendees include:
A critical mass of UX professionals is located in or around Portland. Yet it’s agreed that Maine is a great state, not only in terms of talent and creativity, but in terms of sheer size. As such, 2008 MaineUX summer events were divided between the Southern Maine and Midcoast regions. Future events may be further downeast to Bangor, as well as in the Capital region around Augusta.
MAINEUX SUMMER EVENTS
MaineUX threw 2 statewide events in June–one in Portland, and one in Camden. In August TechMaine staged a UX event.
The June 4th MaineUX happy hour in Camden was–to steal a phrase from Boston AIGA–an awesome “agenda-less, free-form gathering of area creative folk.”
Amidst the rush of the waterfalls of Knox Mill, over which the schwanky Brevetto Kitchen & Wine Bar is perched, 25+ people turned up for drinks, snacks, and stimulating conversation on design, user experience, sticky conundrums, interesting projects, doing business in Maine, the thriving creative economy, aspirations for MaineUX…not to mention topics capturing the essence of summertime in Maine: lobster bakes, sailing, kayaking, climbing Mt Katahdin, Popham Beach, surfing, island treks, bands playing on the pier, farmer’s markets, drive-in movies. The group decided to meet at least 2x a year, most likely partnering with local groups like the Midcoast Magnet, University of Maine School of New Media, Maine Entrepreneurs, AIGA Maine, and the most exciting agencies and design/dev firms in the region.
The Portland MaineUX event on June 11 was a kick-out-the-jams evening with interactive installation artist Amy Stacy Curtis, whose mantra is: “Without your participation, my work is incomplete,” believing her art can come into being fully only when the audience–whom she prefers to engage with as “participants”–interacts with the pieces themselves.
Overlooking Portland Harbor, as evening ferries and yachts glided into pier, a cream-of-the-crop MaineUX crew gathered for this extremely interesting event. Using interactive art as a metaphor for design in general–and user-focused interaction design in particular–Curtis’ talk and slideshow provided a retrospective of her collaborative artworks and evolving philosophy. Together we explored the meaning and experiences around her recent lauded “emerging artist” exhibition at Colby College–a series of colored circles (sorted and arranged according to a series of algorithms) which museum participants rearranged and re-sorted in other patterns. With masters’ both in art and psychology Amy sites preoccupations with “the balance of order, chaos, and repetition” and learning when to cede control with [perhaps ocassionally reluctant] grace.
Additionally August found Maine UXNET Ambassador Susan Doran (yours truly) presenting to a packed house at TechMaine’s monthly Web Developer’s Users Group meetiing on Information Architecture 101: The Facets of IA™ (this ™ isn’t a joke, tho the author feels a tiny bit silly using it).
FALL 2008
So, how to follow up this stellar summer? with a cavalcade of amazing Fall events!
Here’s a sneak peak at what’s in store for MaineUXers and fans of MaineUX–details forthcoming!
________________________________________________________
MON • SEP 15
Social Media 101: Do I Really Need a Facebook Page?
6:00-8:00pm
TechMaine Web Developers Users Group
Westbrook ME
________________________________________________________
WED • SEP 24
Adriane Herman: Checking It Twice: Tracing the Trajectory from Intention to Action
6:00-8:00pm
MaineUX Presents!
Portland ME
________________________________________________________
TUE • SEP 30
Design Challenge
6:00-8:00pm
TechMaine Usability & User Experience Users Group
Portland ME
________________________________________________________
TUE • OCT 7
Setting Up Image Portfolios and Photo Galleries in Drupal - with Todd Woofenden
6:00-8:00pm
TechMaine Drupal Users Group
Portland ME
________________________________________________________
SAT • OCT 18
MaineUX Roadtrip - Amy Stacey Curtis in(ter)Action
3:00-5:00pm
MaineUX Presents!
Sanford ME
________________________________________________________
WED • OCT 21
Mark Schraad: An Evening of Design Thinking
6:00-8:00pm
MaineUX Presents!
Portland ME
________________________________________________________
WED • NOV 11
Aileen Cahill: 10 Marketing Myths UXperts Need to Know
6:00-8:00pm
MaineUX Presents!
Portland ME
________________________________________________________
WED • DEC 10
15th Annual Maine Technology Conference
8:00am-5:00pm
TechMaine
Portland ME
________________________________________________________
WED • DEC 10
2nd Annual MaineUX Fall Dinner
6:00am-8:00pm
Walter’s Cafe
Portland ME
________________________________________________________
Details TBA
The WSG meeting last week was a great night with over 150 people in attendance.
There were three excellent presentations - and slides are now online for two (the third had a lot of video):
Search engine optimisation is usually the first subject that comes to mind when thinking about ways to improve the visibility of your organisation online. But it’s only a piece of the puzzle. In order to help the intended audience find, use and reuse your information, we need to look beyond SEO. Findability could help complete the puzzle. It’s a much broader concept, touching on almost every aspect of the web design and development process, where specialist fields intersect and overlap. We need to try and identify these elements of findability and “plug” them into the user-centred design workflow. It’s a big challenge… Can we connect the dots and bridge the gaps?”
http://www.slideshare.net/RRaeves/findability-going-beyond-seo-presentation/
With the improvements in mobile browsers and in the overall mobile user experience, what do we expect will change for mobile web users? Will we see a ‘one web’ approach? Oliver will talk about why the mobile and PC web experiences will increase in similarity, but still remain very different.
http://www.slideshare.net/oliverweidlich/wsg-august-2008-one-web-presentatio
n/
Where to start when making a website targetted at iPhone users, including “Should you be?”. Frameworks…Javascript…Dev environments… and more. Tim Lucas & Pete Ottery share some experiences about creating iphone.news.com.au.
Slides: Coming, as soon as the 300mb file can be reduced
dConstruct 2008 is the affordable one day conference for people designing and building the latest generation of social web applications. It takes place on September 5th, 2008 at Brighton Dome, Church Street, Brighton, UK
Speaking from personal experience, dConstruct is one of the UK’s best web conferences. I’m really looking forward to this years event.
This year’s topic is Designing the Social Web, the line-up is as follows:
I do not have final details, but wanted to get the word out as soon as possible so you can start planning. Subject to change.
Who: Scott McCloud, Cartoonist and Theorist
What: Comics: A Medium in Transition
When: Friday, October 24, 2008, 6:30 pm
Where: 206 Bowen-Thompson Student Union, Bowling Green State University, Bowling Green, Ohio
One of the sponsoring organizations appears to be the BGSU student chapter of SIGGRAPH / Computer Arts Club. The School of Art may also be funding part of this (Todd Childers is the one who gave me the basic info - thanks Todd!).
Poking around some more, I found "The Comic Book in Popular Culture" scheduled in many rooms in the same building at the same time. Which led me to this call for participation from the Popular Culture Department. So I assume Scott's visit is part of the conference.
And checking out "Comics: A Medium in Transition" by Scott, I see these other performances:
Stay tuned for more info...
There is a student SIGGRAPH chapter at Bowling Green State University. Also known as the Computer Arts Club, it looks like it was started in 2006.
This fall a presentation by Scott McCloud is being planned. Once I learn more I will add his talk to the calendar.
The Western PA Chapter IDSA now has its own spot on the internet! http://westernpaidsa.blogspot.com
Not content to offer their skills to blue chip clients such as Barclays and eBay, Userfocus also provides training courses in areas including user experience design, intranet usability and usability testing. The person behind Userfocus is psychologist David Travis who shares his thoughts in this month’s interview.
How did you get into this field and what sorts of things had you done previously?
Between 1979 and 1986, I earned a degree and a Ph.D in psychology (from the universities of London and Cambridge) and then embarked on an academic career of post-doc research. My interest was in human colour vision and Andrew Monk at the University of York encouraged me to write a cross-over book to help HCI people use colour effectively on displays (called, predictably, “Effective Color Displays”). At the time, designing for colour displays was like designing for Web 2.0: it was seen as a real paradigm shift from the previous technology (even though, in reality, all the old rules still apply). The book got me on the agenda of some people at BT’s research labs in Ipswich who headhunted me for a job in their graphical user interfaces team in 1989 (sadly, it’s the only time I’ve ever been headhunted). I quickly realised that colour was just one element of interface design and BT gave me the opportunity to design usability labs and mock-up future HCI concepts, like telepresence. This gave me the urge to do more applied work, so in 1995 I moved to System Concepts and built up their practice in usability consultancy. I founded Userfocus in 2002.
What are some things (or people) that inspire how you think about and then develop digital experiences for users?
At the University of York in 1986 Andrew Monk introduced me to the Mac. Before that I’d been programming PDP-11s to support my research activities and this was the first graphical user interface I’d ever seen. It was an epiphany. Andrew had a post-doc working with him at the time who insisted on giving me a tutorial on how to use a Mac, as if this was some untamed beast I was about to be let loose on, but I was dying just to play with it. So I’d get into work at 8am before anyone else (this doesn’t seem early to me now but this was at a University) to spend time playing around with MacDraw and Cricket Graph, two wonderful Mac applications. I was blown away by the possibilities. It was like Adam’s first words to Eve: “Stand back, I don’t know how big this thing is going to get.”
From a practitioner’s perspective, the two biggest influences on me have been Bill Buxton and Tom Stewart. I’ve worked with both of them and learnt the importance of a pragmatic approach to design problems and to avoid “analysis paralysis”.
There are various definitions of UX out there depending on who you talk to… What does UX mean to you?
I like the quote from Whitney Quesenbery: “User Experience v. User Interaction v. User Interface v. Information Architecture v. Information Design v. Human Factors v. User-Centered Design v. Performance Centered Design v. … As far as I can tell, a choice of title says more about “where you got on the bus” than any real distinction of goals.”
To me, user centred design means three things: 1. Early and continual focus on users and their tasks. 2. Empirical measurement of user behaviour. 3. Iterative design. You may be doing design, but if you’re not doing all of these things then you’re not user centred.
How does London influence you when it comes to creating and refining interactive experiences?
I’m a Londoner by birth, so I’m not sure how to distinguish the way it influences my work from the influence of just being born here. For example, I’ve borrowed Transport for London’s “red routes” as a metaphor for critical tasks with a product (http://www.userfocus.co.uk/articles/redroutes.html). I’d also point to the sheer number of people in London as an influence. The number of different people that you see every day makes you realise that you can’t do design without some kind of audience research.
Thinking about past or current projects, in what ways, if any, have the expectations changed in terms of the type of UX that is sought (or expected) by users?
In my experience of running hundreds of usability sessions, users tend to have fairly low expectations and are delighted to discover that someone values their opinion. Intranets in particular show woeful levels of usability even though Intranet users are exposed to good web sites every day. So I’m not sure that user expectations have altered much. Clients, on the other hand, are now much more clued up about usability and will approach us with a specific plan of action that they want us to implement. Sometimes this is well thought out, and sometimes it’s poorly thought out, but it shows clearly that the notion of usability is now high on the agenda.
If you were asked to share a book, either fiction or non-fiction, with a colleague in your field, what would it be and why?
Am I allowed to recommend my own book, “E-Commerce Usability”? If not, I’d choose “Strangers to Ourselves” by Timothy D. Wilson. Wilson’s book describes study after study proving that we have very little insight into the motivations behind our behaviour. When designing new products, this means you can’t just ask people what they like or don’t like. You must focus on observable behaviour using techniques like contextual inquiry and “proper” usability testing (i.e. not the kind of usability tests that are run like a 1-1 focus group that spotlight user opinions).
What advice would you give to students interested in this profession?
Having the right technical skills and the right experience will get you only so far. We interview many new graduates and a common problem with many of them is a lack of passion. If you look at some of the best, most inspirational practitioners in our field you’ll see that they think of their work, not as a job, but as a calling. They see the impact of technology on people’s lives as important. They feel that good design makes the world a better place — and that bad design can make life miserable (as anyone who’s worked in a badly designed work environment, like a call centre, would agree). So my advice is: find your passion, pursue it and your career will take care of itself.
What trend(s) do you see advancing that will influence the UX of interactive systems?
I think a key trend is towards really measuring usability, not just testing a product to find usability problems. This means assigning a number to say how usable a product or web site actually is. Unfortunately, many people seem to think that usability measurement means stuff like eye tracking, simply because eye tracking generates lots of numbers and plots pretty graphs. A better example is the usability standard, ISO 20282 (“Ease of operation of everyday products”) which I think will prove to have a huge influence on our field. ISO 20282 includes test methods for quantifying the usability of consumer products to ensure they meet a pre-defined quality level. This development is exciting because it reflects a sea change in the evolving practice of usability. In the old world, usability specialists just found usability problems with a design. In the new world, usability specialists will also answer the question: “How usable is this design?”
Across Cultures, the most recent Website of the National Film Board of Canada (NFB). In collaboration with Ideactif Conseil.
D’une culture à l’autre de l’ONF : Un design centré utilisateur en contexte multiculturel.
Le plus récent site Web de l’Office national du film du Canada (ONF) portant sur la diversité culturelle au Canada. En collaboration avec Idéactif Conseil.
Voici un aperçu de la conférence que j’ai présenté dans le cadre d’Intracom 2008, 8e conférence internationale de l’Association des professionnels professionnels en intranet, Internet et extranet (API).
Les ingrédients clés de la démarche ont été dévoilés et illustrés lors de cette présentation du making-of de la création du plus récent site Web de l’ONF portant sur la diversité culturelle au Canada. Un site qui retrace une histoire étonnante à travers des documents d’archives vidéos, audios et photos des années 40 à aujourd’hui, ainsi que des entrevues et vox populi spécialement conçus pour ce site.
Utilisabilité, accessibilité, standards Web, respect des normes et standards ouverts, SEO, et mesure sont au rendez-vous.
Vous pouvez consulter ci-dessous le fichier powerpoint de ma présentation. Il ne rend compte évidemment que d’une partie de ma communication, mais ça donne tout de même un bon aperçu.
Dans le cadre de la 8e conférence internationale Intracom Québec 2008, présentée par l’Association des professionnels en intranet, Internet et extranet (API), plusieurs membres de notre regroupement de professionnels en utilisabilité - Utilisabilité Québec - présenteront une conférence ou une étude de cas, participeront à un panel, ou tiendront une clinique d’évaluation. Cet événement, devenu incontournable au Québec, est susceptible d’intéresser les professionnels - et les non spécialistes intéressés au domaine - de l’expérience utilisateur, incluant l’ergonomie cognitive et l’utilisabilité, ainsi que les gestionnaires et développeurs Internet en général.
J’y présenterai l’étude de cas D’une culture à l’autre de l’ONF : Un design centré utilisateur en contexte multiculturel, dans la piste «Communication et société», en continuité avec la conférence d’ouverture du renommé Aaron Marcus, Le design Web lié aux expériences multiculturelles.
Je participerai également au panel Amélioration de la qualité des réalisations Web, en compagnie de 4 autres panelistes : Benoit Piette de W3Québec, Jean-François Renaud d’Adviso, Guillaume Séguin d’Okiok et Samuel Lavoie de NVI Solution.
D’autres membres d’Utilisabilité Québec y participeront :
La conférence Les séniors sont-ils devenus technos ?, Utilisabilité Québec et Impact Recherche dévoilent les résultats d’une vaste étude sur l’utilisation d’Internet par les personnes de plus de 50 ans, avec Stéphanie Le Rouzic et Sandrine Prom Tep d’Utilisabilité Québec
Utilisabilité Québec accueillera également les quelques 300 participants à leur kiosque afin de les informer, échanger avec eux et répondre à leurs questions.
Au plaisir de vous y rencontrer les 29-30 avril et 1er mai au Centre des congrès de la ville de Québec.
On Wednesday, April 2, we held a local user experience networking meeting in Ann Arbor. We invited leaders of local professional chapters related to user experience, university representatives, and anyone else who was interested in spending the evening meeting new people who are interested in UX. After letting everyone meet each other individually, we had dinner and then went around the room, learning about what each person was involved in. (See some photos.) The attendees:
There were several opportunities for cooperation and collaboration mentioned, such as organizing World Usability Day, joint HCI researcher/practitioner speaker series, monthly meeting information sharing, game design talks, and so on. As opportunities arise, we will leverage the contacts made at this meeting.
We asked several people if they wanted a mailing list or online group to stay in touch, and almost everyone said they were already on too many lists. We think instead it is better to leverage the existing lists, groups, social networks and so on. For example, the UXnet group on Facebook is something to join.
We think while we are using the existing tools to stay in touch and look for opportunities to work together, we should start planning our next meeting of local leaders with a passion for user experience. There are several representatives from local groups that could not make it this time, there are new groups of people to invite (such as advertising professionals or managers of local user experience teams), there is more brainstorming and planning we can do for specific UX projects, and there are other areas of the region we can reach out to.
As UXnet local ambassadors, we think that the biggest value we can add to the local user experience community is to focus on organizing these face-to-face networking events, and then let others take it from there on how they want to cooperate and collaborate.
We look forward to organizing more user experience networking events in the future.
Anthony, Dan, Keith
If you live in Brighton (UK), you might be interested in attending the 1st meeting of the UX Brighton group tomorrow (15th April).
The idea of this initial meeting is to
There are (at time of writing), 3 places still available.
Keep up with UX Brighton
Hello and welcome to the DFW locale of UXnet. I am Jim Machajewski, the co-ambassador for the DFW locale. Along with my counterpart, Elisa Miller, we will be providing the relevant UX goings on for the the Dallas/Fort Worth region. Elisa and I have worked together on a couple of occasions now. Together we have a large reach into the DFW UX community.
So what qualifies me for this position you ask? Well, it was the dawn of the Internet age when I graduated from college, and my early positions had me building some of the very first Internet and intranet applications. As a consultant, I taught myself HTML, JavaScript and CSS to become a Front-End Technology Engineer and User Interface Designer at the height of the Dot-Com boom. Throughout this time my focus was on ease of use and simplicity of implementation; a definite less is more approach. My list of clients includes Verizon, Kinko’s, Hewitt Associates, Boots Pharmacy, Tenet Healthcare and a large number of Fortune 500 organizations. My work has been recognized by CIO magazine’s CIO100 award for innovation. I just recently left a position with Perot Systems where I spent four years as their Manager of Information Architecture. I am currently the Director of UX for Coremetrics, Inc. My role includes user research, user interface design, interaction design, information architecture, usability analysis, as well as managing and staffing a team of UX folks. In my spare time I try to keep up with my 2 kids activities (currently t-ball, soccer & piano lessons), I play trumpet in the Southlake Swing Band, and I waste a whole lot of time as a semi-pro photographer.
The UX community in DFW is a large and diverse one. We have an active UPA chapter (http://dfw-upa.org) as well and active STC chapter (http://www.stc-dfw.org).
Thanks, and I look forward to my role as co-Ambassador for UXnet
UX Cocktail Hours Amsterdam is a group for User Experience practitioners in and around Amsterdam who would like to attend (one or more) UX Cocktail Hours in the neighborhood. The goal of the cocktail hours is to get together informally, share news and ideas through short presentations, meet other UX practitioners, chat about work, the weather, “koetjes en kalfjes” (chit-chat), and have a drink (or two). Most Cocktail Hours these days are held at the offices of a local UX department and the drinks and some snacks are usually sponsored.
If you feel your work is related to User Experience, but your business card says Information Architect, Interaction Designer, User Interface Engineer, Concept Designer, Usability Consultant, or similar, you’re welcome too.
The owner of this list is Peter Boersma.
Greetings, Los Angeles!
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.
There’s a growing UX community in Maine–that’s bringing together people interested in conversations with peers, convening around fun and skills-quickening professional events, and basically knowing who’s who and what’s going on in the great state of Maine. In service to that goal, an informal group called MaineUX is getting off the ground.
MaineUX is a community reflecting the “big-tent” of UX, usability, information architecture, design of many stripes — visual, interaction, UI, web, games, software, intranets, graphic, industrial — stretching across the frontiers of social networking, new media, collaborative tech, web 2.0, user-centric IT, search, findability, taxonomy/ontology, information design, creative content strategizy, SEO/SEM, online marketing and advertising, agile and nimble programming, library & information science, elearning, and more.
MaineUX welcomes everyone designing dynamic, memorable, and meaningful user experiences in Maine!
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KEY MAINEUX RESOURCES
maineux.org is a calendar of events in Maine and NH. Since we’re just beginning to think of ourselves in this way, there aren’t that many UX-specific events in Maine. The UX events we do have are awesome. The others are too: a hodge-podge of events we think may be of interest to the MaineUX community. We appreciate people throughout the state sending along events that should be on the calendar. In the future maineux.org may be one-stop shopping for events, job postings, announcements, discussions.
But in the meantime, we rely on its companion MaineUX Google Group as a forum for people to pose questions, compare notes, broach design conundrums, add 2cents to discussions, share cool articles and blog posts. Promote events, post, and hear about, job openings. Meet new people who actually get what we do for a living!
Every fall TechMaine (formerly the Maine Software Developers Association) holds an annual statewide IT conference. For the past several years, a track has been dedicated to Usability & User Experience—often featuring UX experts from Maine as speakers. In 2006 and 2007, as a volunteer to TechMaine, I organized the UX Track, and was wicked excited to bring in amazing speakers like Steve Krug and Carolyn Snyder, Tim Spalding of LibraryThing and John McGrath of wordie (both Maine start-ups), Gessica Silverstein from Molecular, Kyle Pero Soucy, esteemed luminary from NH, Beth Loring from Bentley Design & Usability Center, Sarah Bloomer, Cay Lodine, Ann Marie McCarthy, and more! (To promote the event, MaineUX created a separate mini-site for the UX Track)
Finally, the last Tuesday of every month is TechMaine’s UUUG meeting (User Experience & Usability Users Group). Held at TechMaine’s headquarters in Westbrook, it’s been a terrific focal point of UX activity in Maine! The meetings feature top-notch local UX practitioners and peers presenting on a topic of interest and relevance to the group, including:
You don’t need to be a TechMaine member to attend — and the meetings draw anywhere from an intimate 10 to 30+. Note: Registering ahead of time will get you entered into a drawing for an awesome O’Reilly book–given away at the end of every single meeting!
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Who knew that getting involved with MaineUX could mean building your professional library, building your contacts list, and building community in Maine! Join the discussion list, consult and populate the events calendar, come to UUUG meetings, check out MaineUX events, soon to appear in your part of the state — and stay in touch!
