Track: User Experience
A user doesn’t care about what cool technology, elegant architecture, or effective language are used. For them it's how effective, inspiring and captive the application and gadgets are.
Today we have a number of new technology platforms and interaction patterns; multitouch and gesture interaction, iPhone and Android, rich web applications and filthy rich client application. With all these possibilities, developers and designers have a demanding and delicate task using this power to simplify, enhance and enrich the user’s experience.
Wednesday
Interactive Visualizations from Microsoft Research
Today’s software can display information in ways we only dreamed of just five or ten years ago. We’ll look at some of the ways Microsoft Research is contributing to these advances, including projects like Photosynth, Image Composite Editor, HD View, and WorldWide Telescope. We'll see how developers can use similar visualization techniques and take advantage of technologies like Virtual Earth’s Silverlight map control, Silverlight’s Deep Zoom feature, and WPF’s Direct3D integration.
Eric Stollnitz
Eric has worked at Microsoft for seven years, first helping to create the Expression Blend user-interface design tool, and more recently helping the Interactive Visual Media group of Microsoft Research develop innovative ideas into shipping software. Eric is passionate about computer graphics, data visualization, and computational photography.
GUIDe for Saving Face: Developing Killer GUIs with Agile Methods
Agile methods are frequently associated with iterations, incremental development, and adding thin slices of functionality at a time. We have mantras such as YAGNI and we promote refactoring. These concepts are, however, harder to apply to UI-intensive application code than faceless back end systems. In this session, we will incorporate ideas from user-centered design and explore through a mixture of presentations and hands-on exercise how we do user-facing application development at Reaktor.
Lasse Koskela
Lasse is a coach, trainer, consultant and programmer, spending his days helping clients create successful software products and improve their performance through the application of agile methods and a culture of continuous learning. He believes that the most effective method of coaching software professionals is by working with software. One of the pioneers of the Finnish agile community and author of "Test Driven", Lasse speaks frequently at international conferences.
User Experience – because nothing else really matters
Great experiences emerges only when concept, technology and UX design merge. In the quest for the great application we must leave behind the old notion of ‘the experience layer’ and understand that the experience is the sum of all the parts.
KLAUS SILBERBAUER
Klaus Silberbauer is Concept Director at Creuna Denmark. Originally an interaction designer, he’s been working hands on with commercial web sites since 1999 – from 2004 with Creuna, a Scandinavian based full-service digital agency. During the last couple of years he has had an active role in Creuna’s turn around from an IT consultancy to a digital agency, while growing from 100 to 350+ employees.
Tap is the New Click
Even though touchscreen and gestural technology has been around for decades, Nintendo’s Wii, Apple’s iPhone and Microsoft Surface have heralded a new era of interaction design where gestures in space and touches on a screen will be as prominent as pointing and clicking. But how do you create products for this new paradigm? While most of us know how to design for web and desktop applications, many are still wondering how to adequately design for interactive gestures.
Dan Saffer
Dan Saffer is a principal at Kicker Studio. He has designed devices, software, websites, and services that are currently used by millions every day. An
acclaimed speaker and author, his best-selling book Designing for Interaction
has been called "a bookshelf must-have for anyone thinking of creating
new designs." His latest book, Designing Gestural Interfaces, was published in 2008. His design innovations have received several patents.
Design to Development- Collaborating and Communicating on Interaction Design
How to prototype and spec (document) UI designs for an easy transition to the development team.
Theresa Neil
Theresa Neil has been designing user interfaces since 2001 when she coded her first seat map for an airline kiosk. She loved the direct interaction of tapping a seat to change rows, and updating as seat was assigned.
In the past 8 years, she has led the design for more than 40 web, desktop, and mobile applications as the Usability Lead, then on her own as a User Experience consultant. Recent clients include Fortune 500 companies, non-profit organizations, and local start-ups.
How Exactly Can Developers Create a Compelling User Experience?
As our industry has matured, expectations for software systems have changed. In a sense, the early pioneers in our industry had it easy: Their success was in simply getting software to do something. Today, delivering a working system is often not enough to achieve success. Instead, the system must be user-friendly, and in some situations, its interface must be compelling and provide a "wow" factor.
Ben Galbraith
Ben Galbraith is the co-director of Developer Tools at Mozilla and the co-founder of Ajaxian.com. Ben has long juggled interests in both business and tech, having written his first computer program at six years old, started his first business at ten, and entered the IT workforce at twelve. He has delivered hundreds of technical presentations world-wide, produced several technical conferences, and co-authored over a half-dozen books.
