Sessions at UX Australia 2011 about User Experience on Tuesday 23rd August

We’ve heard it all before…prototype, prototype, prototype! It’s a standard step in almost any design process – but often the first step skipped in time and budget constrained projects. Although prototyping is considered a luxury for many PC-based experiences, it is an absolutely essential part of creating compelling tablet and mobile experiences.

This workshop will outline why prototyping is an essential part of the emerging world of tablet and mobile experience design. You’ll learn the underlying design principles and design conventions of Natural User Interfaces (NUIs), animated transitions and the interaction design language that is emerging as touchscreen devices become commonplace. You’ll also learn how and why to cultivate the two most important skills necessary for creating compelling tablet and mobile experiences: a curiosity for context and ruthless editing.

Finally, you’ll learn a wide variety of hands-on prototyping methods that can be applied to your design process. You’ll receive tactical, hands-on instruction for how to storyboard concepts and screens, sketch transitions, and turn your ideas into high-fidelity on-device prototypes with speed and confidence.

User experience is rightly seen as a critical way to stand out on today’s competitive web. But how does one go about shaping something as vague and personal as someone’s enjoyment of a website? What does it mean in practical terms?

This workshop gives an outstanding introduction to the world of web user experience design. By learning both the basic theory and practical applications of usability, information architecture and interaction design, you’ll learn how to make websites your users love and your company will profit from.

The workshop covers the entire design process. We begin with the fundamentals of both user and business research, including how to draw out unspoken requirements from both groups. We move on to discuss ways to turn your research into design concepts, and tools that will help you structure the site and pin down its major elements. Finally, we look at how to make effective wireframes and prototypes, test them with users and improve your designs through iteration.