Sessions at IA Summit 2011 with slides on Friday 1st April

What do fountain pens, football and photographs have in common? Everything we experience in life is filtered through some story. The things we buy, the decisions we make, how we spend our time— stories govern all these actions. But how are these stories constructed? Specifically, what have we learned about how our brains make sense of and integrate new information? And how can we use these insights to sharpen our design skills? Between lively anecdotes, speaker Stephen P. Anderson will share fascinating insights from psychology, neuroscience and learning theories to help explain why things have meaning in our lives. You’ll learn about symbols, stories and motivation, and the science behind the old adage “perception is reality.”

Recently, there has been a surge in the number of tools that are available to conduct unmoderated (“automated” or “asynchronous”) remote usability testing. This surge is changing the user experience industry and it forces us, whether we want to or not, to take a closer look at what the benefits and drawbacks are of unmoderated testing and whether or not we should incorporate it into our usability toolbox.

In this session we will cover: what you can learn from unmoderated testing, how actionable the data is, how it’s conducted, when it should be conducted, benefits and drawbacks, and an overview of some unmoderated testing tools that are currently available. An excellent hand out will be given out listing all the available tools with descriptions and pricing information — truly a great resource to have at your fingertips!