Reviews
Conference Review: UIE Web App Summit 2007: Part I
By Pabini Gabriel-Petit
Published: March 6, 2007
Jared Spool’s User Interface Engineering (UIE) thought the time had come for a UX conference focusing on Web applications and thus produced the first UIE Web App Summit. This conference definitely filled what formerly was an unmet need. The UIE Web App Summit took place at the Monterey Marriott, in Monterey, California, U.S.A., on January 21st through 23rd, 2007. It drew a capacity crowd of 218 people, who had traveled from far and wide to attend the event. While most attendees came from the United States and Canada, nine came from the UK and Europe and four hailed from Oceania and Asia.
Tutorial: Deconstructing Web Applications
Presenter: Hagan Rivers
Summit Keynote: Moving Towards Delight: Following the Rapid Evolution of Web-Based Applications
Presenter: Jared Spool
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Conference Review: UIE Web App Summit 2007: Part II
By Pabini Gabriel-Petit
Published: March 6, 2007
More session reviews.
RIA Patterns: Best Practices for Common Patterns of Rich Interaction
Presenter: Bill Scott
Communicating Concepts with Comics
Presenter: Kevin Cheng
Best Practices for Form Design: Bridging the Gap with Your Customers
Presenter: Luke Wroblewski
Web Application Page Hierarchy
Presenter: Luke Wroblewski
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Conference Review: UIE Web App Summit 2007: Part III
By Pabini Gabriel-Petit
Published: March 6, 2007
More session reviews and the conclusion of my conference review.
Building a Great User Interface, the Netflix Way
Presenter: Sean Kane
Tagging in Your Web World
Presenter: Thomas Vander Wal
Learning from Social Web Applications
Presenter: Joshua Porter
Design Strategies for Web-Based Recommender Systems
Presenter: Rashmi Sinha
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Usability in China: Encore
By Daniel Szuc and Paul J. Sherman
Published: January 8, 2007
Our story starts in late 2004, at the Make the World Simpler event in Shanghai, China—a modest-sized meeting of UX professionals that was organized by the China chapters of the Usability Professionals’ Association (UPA). At this meeting, leaders of the mainland China and Hong Kong UPA chapters met to discuss organizing a usability conference in China. We decided to call the conference User Friendly.
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Interaction Frontiers 06: Conference Report
By Laura Caprio
Published: November 20, 2006
On June 16, 2006, Interaction Frontiers was held at the Bicocca University, in Milano, Italy.
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A Day at Interaction Frontiers 06
By Luca Mascaro
Published: November 20, 2006
There are not many interaction design conferences in Italy, so you can imagine the interest a conference about the frontiers of interaction design engendered. Interaction Frontiers 2006—the second edition of this conference—had as its mission the exploration of the future of interaction design. Though I’m Swiss, my native language is Italian, and this topic attracted my attention.
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The Atmosphere at Interaction Frontiers 2006
By Giovanni Bellocchio
Published: November 20, 2006
Matteo Penzo was the brain, the hands, and the energy behind Interaction Frontiers 2006. The recipe for this event was deceptively simple: Gather some fine thinkers in a room and let them speak about technology and people. The 2005 edition of Interaction Frontiers had been just an appetizer—a taste of things to come.
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Book Review: Designing Interfaces
By Leo Frishberg
Published: November 6, 2006
I must admit that I am not a fan of pattern books in general—especially in the field of design. I’ve always felt they are excellent sources of inspiration if you’re crafting a quilt or stenciling a wainscot for your living room, but for more involved design activities, I’ve concluded they are too simplistic—perhaps even limiting. I suspect this opinion was informed by my architecture professor’s intensely negative reaction to Christopher Alexander’s A Pattern Language and A Timeless Way of Building when they were first published. Years later, when I learned that software engineers were enamored of Alexander’s books, and the emergence of software patterns had its basis in Alexander’s notion of design patterns, I was bemused and skeptical.
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Conference Report: The Web and Beyond
By Peter Bogaards
Published: October 23, 2006
In the beautiful surroundings of the Pathé Tuschinski Theatre in Amsterdam, the Dutch chapter of SIGCHI—SIGCHI.nl, now rebranded as CHINederland.nl—on June 8th, 2006, held its 10th annual conference, which was entitled The Web and Beyond, as shown in Figure 1. The conference focused on the challenges and opportunities Web 2.0 presents to the field of user experience design.
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The Web and Beyond: SIGCHI Conference in Amsterdam
By Pabini Gabriel-Petit
Published: October 23, 2006
The Netherlands’ tenth annual SIGCHI Conference took place on Thursday, June 8th, 2006, in Amsterdam. Titled The Web and Beyond, the conference focused primarily on interaction design for Web 2.0. The conference drew a capacity crowd to the fabulous art deco Theater Tuschinski, shown in Figure 1. There could be no more beautiful venue for a design conference.
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Strategy06: A UX Professional's Experience of the Conference
By Pabini Gabriel-Petit
Published: September 25, 2006
Strategy06, the second annual IIT (Illinois Institute of Technology) Institute of Design Strategy Conference, took place at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago (MCA), Illinois, on May 17 and 18, 2006. The organizers characterized this conference as “an international executive forum addressing how businesses can use design to explore emerging opportunities, solve complex problems, and achieve lasting strategic advantage.”
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Book Review: Designing for Interaction
By Leo Frishberg
Published: September 11, 2006
Dan Saffer’s Designing for Interaction: Creating Smart Applications and Clever Devices was an ambitious undertaking. In fewer than 300 pages, he has attempted to cover the history, current practice, and notions about the future of the rapidly evolving discipline of interaction design (IxD). Whether you are simply curious about interaction design, are entering the profession yourself, or are collaborating with an interaction designer, Designing for Interaction is a good place to start your journey down the road of interaction design.
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Experiencing CHI 2006: From a Practitioner's Viewpoint: Part IV
By Pabini Gabriel-Petit
Published: August 28, 2006
Wednesday brought greater diversity in my experience of the conference. In addition to attending a course, “The Art of Speaking,” I checked out the Exhibits in The Commons, heard part of a panel discussion titled “The Route to the Sea for User Value,” and in the evening, joined the crowd at the Hospitality Events.
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Experiencing CHI 2006: From a Practitioner's Viewpoint: Part V
By Pabini Gabriel-Petit
Published: August 28, 2006
On Thursday, the last day of the conference, I attended Part III of the three-part series on public speaking for HCI professionals and the closing plenary session.
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Experiencing CHI 2006: From a Practitioner's Viewpoint: Part III
By Pabini Gabriel-Petit
Published: August 14, 2006
On Tuesday, I attended a full-day course, “Repositioning User Experience as a Strategic Process.” Then, in the evening, colleagues from the Interaction Design Association (IxDA) and the User Experience Network (UXnet) gathered for dinner at Buonanotte.
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Experiencing CHI 2006: From a Practitioner's Viewpoint: Part II
By Pabini Gabriel-Petit
Published: July 24, 2006
On Monday, after Scott Cook’s excellent Opening Plenary Session, I attended a series of three courses presented by Jared Spool, CEO and Founding Principal of User Interface Engineering (UIE), shown in Figure 1. Jared is a very engaging speaker and his knowledge about product usability is both broad and deep, so his presentations are always enjoyable and informative. For me, this was a day well spent.
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International Usability Evaluation: Issues and Strategies
Reviewed by Michele Marut
Published: July 24, 2006
Like many UX practitioners, I’m often involved in designing products that will be sold across the globe. Half of the challenge is acknowledging there is no one-size-fits-all set of design criteria. The other half is knowing the tradeoffs when choosing between usability methods for requirements gathering and evaluation. What many may find surprising is that our tried-and-true methods themselves can have limitations, depending on the context in which we apply them.
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