Tuesday Featured Talks
Your Chance to Pick and Choose!
Tuesday, November 6th is our "sampler day," where our conference speakers give informative and entertaining 90-minute presentations in two tracks. Note that some speakers are presenting a different topic than in their full-day seminar.
There is no registration for the featured talks. Attendance at each session will be limited only by available space. Tuesday also includes lunch and an entertaining (and often times controversial) keynote address by our very own Jared M. Spool. And be sure to join us for the conference reception from 5:30-7:30 Tuesday evening.
8:30am - 10:00am
Beyond Ethnography: Model-Driven Agile Inquiry
Larry Constantine, Constantine and Lockwood
The gold standard for field studies is ethnography. Ethnographic research approaches, such as contextual inquiry, have a long track record of success, but the techniques can also be daunting, and the processes may sometimes be considered too expensive and time consuming, particularly in projects using XP, SCRUM, and other modern agile development techniques.
In this presentation, Larry Constantine, an expert user researchers, introduces the approach of Model-Driven Inquiry. Model-driven inquiry is an agile approach to user studies and user requirements that turns the scientific research paradigm on its head. Rather than beginning with extensive field study to gather vast collections of data from which insight is extracted and models are constructed, model-driven inquiry starts by building models which then drive a fast, narrowly focused, iterative inquiry process. Larry will show you how model-driven inquiry enables interaction designers to quickly and efficiently gain deep insight into user needs then incrementally elaborate and validate user models.
The Secrets of Killer Web Content
Gerry McGovern, author of Content is Critical & Killer Web Content
There are two unique skills you need to master if you want to write web content that really makes a difference. Firstly, you need to identify the words that matter most to your customers, particularly the words they use when they search. Then you use those words liberally in your content.
The second skill is that you write the link first, not the heading, not the sentence, not the paragraph. Great web content is built from the link upwards. On the Web, it all starts with the link!
Gerry McGovern, author of the groundbreaking books Content Critical and Killer Web Content, will give you invaluable tips, tricks and techniques that will help you master these two skills. As a bonus, you will also learn how to write killer web headings and summaries, based on research Gerry has done over a 5-year period in 13 countries.
10:15am - 11:45am
Expert Reviews
Rolf Molich, DialogDesign
Expert reviews, such as heuristic evaluations and other design inspections, are the second-most widely used usability method. Research shows that expert reviews are often conducted with a poor methodology and don't always live up to their full potential. In this presentation, Rolf Molich, an expert usability practitioner, will discuss proven methods for conducting and reporting expert reviews of a user interface design.
Rolf will give rare insights into how renowned experts conduct reviews. The talk is based on the CUE studyies, where teams including some highly esteemed usability professionals independently tested the same web site in realistic, industrial settings.
CUE results show that properly conducted expert reviews yield results that are comparable to those from usability tests -- and far more cost efficient. During the session you will have the opportunity of testing your own skills in recognizing usability problems and reporting them properly.
Best Practices for Form Design: Bridging the Gap with Your Customers
Luke Wroblewski, Yahoo!
In the world of Web applications, forms bridge the gap between people, their information, and your product or service. From registration forms that welcome new customers to checkout forms that finalize e-commerce transactions, Web forms frequently broker crucial online interactions.
In this session, Luke will walk you through the considerations and best practices of Web form design culled from international usability testing, eye-tracking studies, and over ten years of designing Web applications. He’ll outline how the interaction and visual design of Web forms can make the difference between acquiring a customer and completing a transaction or not.
After you learn about how different types of forms, input fields, input labels, calls to action, and surrounding visual elements can support or impair different aspects of user behavior, you’ll never look at your Web forms the same way again.
12:00pm - 2:00pm
2:15pm - 3:45pm
Communicating Concepts with Comics
Kevin Cheng, Yahoo!
Many teams try to use requirements documents, personas, user scenarios, and storyboards to help understand how people will use a feature or integrate a design into their life. However, these tools often yield unsatisfactory and suboptimal results. They suffer from being ignored after their creation, interpreted differently by everyone who uses them, and focus on the interface instead of the user's actual experience.
At Yahoo!, Kevin has been experimenting with using comics as a technique for communicating the core concepts behind a design's intended user experience. In this presentation, he'll share how this technique has worked well to get teams informed and on the same page, without fixating on interface details too early in the project. He'll demonstrate an in-depth walkthrough of his process and the advantages he's found using comics over other methods.
He'll also demonstrate how you can do this technique, even if you are not an artist and feel you can't draw. He'll also demonstrate how he uses a simple Flash viewer to create a portable, distributable version which makes it easy for remote stakeholders to participate.
The Myths of Innovation
Scott Berkun, scottberkun.com
Innovation is more than a buzzword – All the great ideas we take for granted today, from the Internet, to the cellular phone, to anti-lock brakes, all started as ideas in someone’s mind, dismissed by leaders of major organizations. How these innovations came to be, and the challenges the managers of those projects faced, are untold stories today, creating a gold mine of lessons ready for use today.
In this talk, Scott Berkun, author of the popular new book, The Myths of Innovation, demystifies innovation and teaches management lessons distilled from the history of technology and business innovation. Instead of magic formulas or hype-laden platitudes, you’ll learn insights from the true stories of innovations past.
4:00pm - 5:30pm
Integrating Design In Your Organization
Kim Goodwin, Cooper
More and more companies are beginning to realize that their relationships with customers—and therefore customers’ impressions of their brand—are almost entirely mediated by technology, such as digital products, Web sites, and automated telephone systems. As a result, more companies are also realizing that interaction and experience design should be a core part of their business. Unfortunately, most companies have no idea how to build an internal design practice, much less how to integrate that practice into their organizational structures, processes, and culture.
Integrating design isn’t like plugging in a new telephone system. It requires careful planning and commitment to cultural change. Based on Cooper’s experience with hundreds of projects and companies, Kim Goodwin will discuss what it takes to build an effective and lasting focus on design.
Mobile Web Design
Cameron Moll, LDS Church
With 2.7 billion mobile users worldwide, experts expect a major cross-over will occur by the end of 2007, with more users accessing the web via mobile device than PC. Is your organization prepared to leverage this alternative web medium? Publishing web content for a wide variety of mobile devices may seem an insurmountable undertaking, but armed with a knowledge of XHTML and CSS, it isn't nearly as challenging as you think. This session will equip you with practical design techniques for embracing the mobile web by confronting its limitations and exploiting its unique opportunities.