Monday, August 18, 2008

UX Week 2008 Rocked!

a sticky note love seat featured at UX Week 2008

Last week I spent some time at the Adaptive Path UX Week Conference in San Francisco. I learned SO much while I was there and met a lot of great Experience Design folks. Some of the highlights:
  • Don Norman who kicked off the week and talked about UX in general.

  • Jensen Harris who talked about designing the MS Office interface(s) (The Ribbon).
  • The Neo-futurists from Chicago.
  • TCHO - a new chocolate company in San Francisco who let us beta test their chocolate.
    • This was the second Adaptive Path conference I've attended. I must say, these people know how to put on a conference. They really understand that we're attending a user experience conference so they pay attention to details.

    Location: UX Week 2008 was at the Palace Hotel. A beautiful spot. A wonderful user experience. Beautiful surroundings. Good food. Wonderful service. Attention to detail.

    Events/Program: Not your usual conference stuff. UX Week offered several great hands-on workshops as well as some fun and pertinent entertainment (a performance by the Neo-futurists). One of the workshops I attended was called "How to Be A Sticky Note Ninja". (More on that in another blog post).

    Adaptive Path employees. Approachable (they don't walk around like arrogant designers with a capital "D" on their chests). Friendly. Helpful. Interesting.

    My rating of the conference: Thumbs up!

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    posted by kaari @ 2:53 PM 0 Comments

    Thursday, April 17, 2008

    Get it?

    Nikon calls me a User not an Owner. I like that!


    I'm always amused when I find myself behaving like a regular user rather than a designer... Case in point, I just bought a new Nikon digital SLR camera (thanks for the 2007 bonus Yahoo! Inc.). I eagerly opened the box, pulled out the camera, looked at it and thought "Hmm. I better read the owner's manual first. This thing looks pretty complicated." Then, I grabbed the owner's manual; the big several hundred page owner's manual. Ouch! I really wanted to use this thing sometime in the next hour. If I go through the manual it will be days before I can get started.

    Thankfully, Nikon gets it! They know that I want to play with my new camera now. So they've provided me with a lovely Quick Start Guide. Wow! Everything I need to know just to get started is in this guide. Looks like I can take some photos within the next hour after all. Thanks Nikon. Thanks for paying attention to User Needs and User Behaviors. Thanks for getting it!


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    posted by kaari @ 1:10 PM 0 Comments