Past Meetings 2008
October 2008 ~ Charlie Kreitzberg, Cognetics Corporation
Despite stormy weather, the October meeting of the CT UPA held
at Pitney Bowes’ Shelton campus was a big success. We had a chance to hear
from Charlie Kreitzberg, the founding editor of the UPA’s User Experience
magazine, the brain behind LUCID (the framework for interaction design) and
the principal of Cognetics Corporation, a New Jersey web design firm. In
addition to Charlie, we also heard from Anne Paulker Kreitzberg, an expert
on creative strategies for corporate collaboration, performance and change
management and a member of the faculty at the Wharton School of the University
of Pennsylvania.
Both Charlie and Anne were speaking informally, allowing for free-flowing discussion
and lots of questions from our members. The main topic of the talk was the
value of user centered design in the era of Web 2.0, where usable design
should no longer be perceived as a tactical process, but as a core business
competence. Charlie drew on his several years of experience in user centered
design and offered actionable advice on how to overcome management resistance
by establishing a clear user experience ROI.
The latter part of the discussion led to the topic of young usability professionals
and how they can develop or improve a culture of user centered design at
companies they work for. Several members offered their opinions on how to
retain new talent in companies where User Centered Design is still in the
process of being fully understood and adopted as the main driver for business
success.
If you missed this most engaging presentation, you can read more on Charlie’s concept of Evolving Web, or Anne's thoughts on collaboration.
Charlie’s excellent Web 2.0 Tutorial is also available online. Take the opportunity to read it.
September 2008 ~ April McGee, Human Factors International
The September meeting of the Connecticut Chapter was held at Open Solutions in Glastonbury, and featured April McGee of Human Factors International speaking on, Beyond Usable Websites: Persuading Your Customers to Go with the Flow.
Traditional usability focuses on ease-of-use factors such as learnability, efficiency, memorability and satisfaction. It asks questions such as: Can people navigate the site? Can they find the content that they need? But once they've found the information, are your customers actually clicking where you want them to? Are they noticing important content? Or overlooking it? Do your designs connect with your users and engage them?
In this session, April delved into the emotional layer of the user experience and discussed how the elements of persuasion, emotion and trust affect site usage and decision making. She related how you can design your site to grab users' attention and increase their momentum towards the next step. Finally, she suggested what questions you should ask to evaluate how well your site reflects the aspirations of your customers.
July 2008 ~ Carole Bilson, Pitney Bowes
Carole Bilson Vice President of Global Design and Usability
and Technology Support Operations at Pitney Bowes
in Shelton, Connecticut addressed our chapter on July 24th of this year.
We were particularly fortunate to have Carole for this meeting since she had been invited
to deliver the opening keynote address at this year's National
Conference of the Usability
Professionals Association in Baltimore in June. Carole spoke on How Innovation Works.
Her main point was that companies need to be innovative in order to thrive. How do you foster
a culture of innovation? How do you sustain innovative thinking? Can
the return on innovation be measured? Ms. Bilson's talk was very informative, and some keen insights and tips for fostering innovation and elevating usability within a corporate culture in general were delivered.
March 2008 ~ Chauncey Wilson
Our chapter was honored to host usability maven (“someone who is dazzlingly skilled in any field” according to WordNet) Chauncey Wilson at our March 20th meeting. Open Solutions in Glastonbury was kind enough to host us once again at their beautiful facility (Thank You Michael Rawlins). . . and the pizza was great as usual. Personally I only attend for the pizza.
All kidding aside, Chauncey is one of the true pioneers in our field and is an energetic, knowledgeable, and always entertaining speaker. Original plans for the evening included two short presentations to be provided, with the audience voting on a third. However Chauncey was so engaging, and the audience was so totally involved that we only had time for two of the presentations including Brainstorming, It’s Not as easy as You Think, and The Problem with Problems. The only positive consequence from running out of time so unexpectedly is that we now have the perfect excuse to invite Chauncey back to continue the dialog. Remember to mark your calendar when you see Chauncey Wilson’s name pop up on our Upcoming page!
If you were unable to attend you truly missed an energetic and fun-filled evening. For those unable to attend here is a .pdf of all of Chauncey’s slides, both the talks he delivered and those we have yet to hear. And, by the way, a few pictures taken that evening have been posted here.