Sessions at Big Design Conference 2011 about User Experience on Saturday 16th July

Fingers and thumbs turn design conventions on their head. Touchscreen interfaces create ergonomic, contextual, and even emotional demands that are unfamiliar to desktop designers. Find out why our beloved desktop windows, buttons, and widgets are weak replacements for manipulating content directly, and learn practical principles for designing mobile interfaces that are both more fun and more intuitive. Along the way, discover why buttons are a hack, how to develop your gesture vocabulary, and why toys and toddlers provide eye-opening lessons in this new style of design.

Also: cats in tanks, and Hasseloff with puppies.

Designing a great user experience, having a clear product roadmap, and developing iteratively are key elements to a successful software product. But what happens when the designers, developers, and product owners are at odds, or worse, have frequent unresolved arguments about the product? If these key players are not fully engaged in the process, or if they’re engaged but not agreeing on how to proceed, even the best designs can go unused or end up badly implemented. In Agile development shops, the speed with which development moves can create a division between these groups that leaves everyone feeling isolated and disenfranchised, and cause good projects to end badly.

This presentation addresses all three groups as equal partners. Regardless of your role, it will give you a context for understanding how to communicate effectively across the boundaries of product strategy, user experience design, and software development. It also covers specific techniques you can apply at different times in the development cycle to improve your chances of success by ensuring that the key players are speaking the same language. The content is not theoretical or idealized – it is based on years of experience with real-world product design and development, and up-close observation of what works and what doesn’t when real people are creating real products.

The world of web application design is expanding at a rapid rate. We’re now expected to design great experiences across a huge variety of platforms, from small screens to large displays. The flood of mobile applications and successful online businesses are showing our executives that design matters.

Why is all this happening now? Where is it all going? UIE’s own Jared Spool will show you how four driving forces—market maturity, the emergence of experience, Kano’s model, and Sturgeon’s Law—are increasing the visibility and value of design in organizations everywhere. He’ll show you what the next generation of design teams will look like and how you’ll get there.