Sessions at UX Week 2011 with photos

Wednesday 24th August 2011

• Designing Smart Things: User Experience Design for Networked Devices

  by Mike Kuniavsky

  The wide availability of many different kinds of network-connected digital devices—from tablets to TVs to bathroom scales and cars—raises deep questions about how to design user experiences for and with those devices. In this workshop Mike Kuniavsky, author of Smart Things: Ubiquitous Computing User Experience Design, will introduce you to concepts of user experience design for the post-PC/post-phone world.

  How do you design experiences that transcend a single device, or even a family of devices? How do you create experiences that exist simultaneously in your hand and in the cloud?

  Using plentiful examples drawn from cutting edge products and the history of technology, Mike will describe underlying trends, show the latest developments and ask some broader questions. As a group, we will analyze the big hits and disasters to uncover what makes a successful ubiquitous computing user experience, and what doesn’t.

  This workshop will introduce both fundamental concepts of ubiquitous computing user experience design and specific techniques for designing services and interfaces.

  Topics covered will include:

  • Design for multiple scales
  • Design for services used by multiple devices
  • Rethinking everyday objects and experiences
  • Understanding use context
  • Hardware/software mashups
  • Sketching in hardware

  Expect hands-on design explorations, group ideation and the opportunity to make the abstract future of user experience design a little more concrete.

  • multi-channel
  • User Experience

  At 9:00am to 5:30pm, Wednesday 24th August

  Coverage photo slide deck transcript

Thursday 25th August 2011

• Designing Mobile Web Experiences

  by Luke Wroblewski

  Each day, device manufacturers ship more than a million touch-screen phones that enable new ways for people to interact with the Web. But when they get to your Web site or application –what kind of experience will people with these devices have? Will they be delighted by your mobile Web experience or frustrated?

  In this workshop on Web design best practices for modern mobile devices, Luke Wroblewski will detail how to think about and design for Web organization, actions, inputs, and layout on mobile. Through presentations, collaborative sessions, and lots of examples, you’ll learn how to:

  • Use “content first/navigate second” organizational structures optimized for small screens and mobile use cases.
  • Design for increasingly prevalent touch interactions with appropriate targets and gestures.
  • Construct forms and input fields to make input on mobile easier and more frequent.
  • Manage layouts across multiple devices with ruthless editing, device classes, and responsive/flexible designs.
  • And more…

  Armed with these design best practices and principles, you can make sure people have a great mobile Web experience whenever they visit your site.

  • Mobile
  • Mobile Web

  At 9:00am to 5:30pm, Thursday 25th August

  Coverage photo slide deck

Friday 26th August 2011

• How Our Social Circles Influence What We Do, Where We Go, and How We Decide

  by Paul Adams

  When it comes to the things we like, the activities we do, the products we buy and the places we go, we turn to our friends to help us decide. The people around us are our workaround solution to the increasing amount of choice, and the increasing amount of available information, in our world.

  Smart businesses are re-orienting themselves around people, their friends, and their network. But in order to do so successfully, they’ll need a deep understanding of how our social lives are structured offline as well as online. How we have different relationships with different people. How we act differently depending on our motivation for communication. How we trust some people more than others.

  In this talk, you will hear stories that illustrate the social patterns in our lives, and how businesses can use that knowledge to build new products, market themselves in more relevant ways, and create experiences that people value. Paul will share stories about how people we are close to, and people we’ve never met, may or may not influence us, and explain how norms learned from people’s local culture impact how much they can be influenced. His goal is for you to walk away with concrete ideas about building great products built around social behavior.

  • Social Media

  At 9:10am to 10:00am, Friday 26th August

  Coverage video photo

• Intentional Environments: Designing a Culture of Co-creation

  by Teresa Brazen and Kate Rutter

  Design doesn’t happen inside a vacuum. It happens inside teams, inside the context of relationships, inside physical spaces, inside organizations with very particular cultures. Ignore that intricate ecosystem, and you might as well give your project a death sentence.

  Teresa and Kate will draw from their experience bringing this holistic outlook to the design process. Pulling from methods used in filmmaking, fine art, design research, facilitation, improv, and UX design, they craft “intentional environments” for their teams and clients. These literal and figurative environments cultivate work that is actionable, co-created, co-owned, and much more likely to succeed in the world.

  They’ll discuss the benefits of intentional environments and walk you through how to design them and methods for keeping them activated throughout the design process. You’ll walk away understanding how to cultivate intentionality, co-create without compromising output, and inspire teams and clients along the way. But more importantly, you’ll have a powerful new framework that will enrich your entire design process.

  • Collaboration
  • Design Process

  At 10:00am to 10:30am, Friday 26th August

  Coverage video slide deck photo