What virtual seminar do you want me to do?
The folks at User Interface Engineering UIE have been great partners and I’ve done work for them at a few of their events. The cool news is they’ve asked me do a virtual seminar for them. You know – you can sign in online from anywhere in the world and learn / debate / heckle as if we were all in the same room. Here’s their list of past virtual seminars. It’s great. We can all be in our underwear and pretend to be all professional and business like. God I love progress.
The challenge is this. I’ve done zillions of seminars of various shapes and sizes, but i don’t know what you people want anymore. So I’m giving you a chance to speak up and nominate a topic.
The only constraint is this: It’s for UIE, so it has to been design / usability related in some way shape or form. Creative thinking or manager-y stuff can count. But I’m always looking for a challenge. Crazy and interesting are good. Take a look at my essay pile: maybe you’ll get some ideas for me there.
If I get a nice list of candidates from you by end of next week, I’ll roll them up into a vote to decide.
Or if you hate me and want me to go away and you all leave me comment-less, I’ll lie to the UIE folks and pretend to have received 245 emails pleading me to do a talk I’ve done before. Please don’t make me a liar. It’s up to you. No pressure though. It will all be your fault and I’ll burn in hell and hate you forever, but no pressure. (Perhaps I should do a seminar on how to be passive aggressive in blog posts :)
Authentication/authorization interfaces that are newbie-friendly
I look for the lock icons on my browser.
I know what a red background in the address field means.
I know that a “Warning” popup with Win XP browser chrome on my Linux box is a fake.
In short, I know this stuff because I’ve been doing it for years. People coming online for the first time *don’t* know this stuff. And what they’re likely to learn first are the graphic signifiers that are easiest to copy and least meaningful: eTrust logos, meaningless confirmations, etc.
How can we design login schemes that a newbie is able to use, but that can not be easily copied? Graphic logins with randomly-placed images? Multi-variate question and answer systems? Typing style recognition? Biometric dongles?
Drew: this is a great topic but I doubt i’m the guy for it. I’m more of a process / approach / ways to think about things guy than a “here’s the best way to solve specific design problem X” kind of guy.
But keep the suggestions coming. Worst case these will be ideas for future seminars for the UIE crew.
Why do smart people do stupid things?
How do you sell the idea of user experience as important to a group which sees it as a non-issue, or worse, a subdivision of the “Make It Look Pretty” department?
At the moment I’m interested in product/site management after release. Where do you go next? How do you develop a solid and workable product management strategy that incorporates the ongoing user experience so senior management can be dissuaded from forgetting about the site and moving on to their next problem.
Topic suggestion: How do you get managers and/or developers to buy into the whole usability/user experience idea (or system) and then to continue with it?
I’ve experienced a situation where developers who were under pressure decided that they’d get to the usability aspects later, which didn’t happen.
Hey, great! I bring you up in these contexts all the time, and think a seminar on them would be good:
1) The list of reasons why products have bad usability – expand on some solutions from the trenches for those issues.
2) Project management of teams when there isn’t a project manager falls on the designer, quite often. But it’s “invisible work,” not part of their real job description, and takes a lot of time. Any thoughts on this dilemma for a hard working designer trying to get actual design done?
3) Being an innovative designer isn’t very easy when you’re loaded with other things to do, like project management. Spin your innovation-execution for us designers.
4) Train Wrecks – spotting the signs BEFORE getting in too far as the UI designer. Or how to help mitigate/prevent them as a designer on the team.
5) Your post on IXDA about educating companies about UX and design, and changing corporate perception of our role and skillset. Expand on that one. Who doesn’t need their group to be more effective internally? And it would work for consultants too, if done right.
And here’s another one I’ve been thinking about, not for myself personally you understand:
6) Therapy for designers. I think most designers need a lot of therapy :-) What are the things we can change, and the things we can’t change? How do we get the courage and acceptance to work between the two and stay happy and productive without burnout or cynicism?
Lynn
These are some where I would be personally interested interested in hearing your thoughts.
1. N (10, 20, 30; depending on what time permits) most common User interface / usability issues in websites or web applications.
2. N (10, 20, 30; depending on what time permits) best web 2.0 websites / web application and what they did correctly.
3. Innovative design using HTML and CSS vs. Flex or Silverlight based RIA. Both have their own place and most designers miss the point of what to use where.
4. Based on Robby’s idea – Striking a User interface vs. usability balanace. i.e. “look pretty vs. usable” experience and striking a balance between the two.
5. N (10, 20, 30 depending on what time permits) fundamental usability tips every developer should be aware of – even if he is not a usability specialist.
6. Innovation with Less – Examples where innovation in user interface and usability has been achived by removing elements not by adding more of them. The minimalist user interface and user experience apporach.
7. Usability for startups – promoting a culture where usability is considered a first class citizen much like other development functions.
8. From nowhere to somewhere or somewhere to nowhere – examples of a few applications on the web which have imrpooved tremendously in terms of user interface and usability vs. a few which have gone down hill. Lessons learnt and mistakes.
9. Usability during product evolution – working on keeping your product user friendly as you move from one version to another.
10. N (10, 20, 30; depending on what time permits) real word ushe ability examples which can be adopted on the web. Examples of devices, billboard, sign boards and anything else which shows innovative usability in real world and how that can be brought into your web applications.
11. Next Gen user interface and usability on the desktop – WPF and other technologies and what they are doing to take usability to the next level. In browser experience vs. out of browser experience. Is web primarily – are mordern day web applications merely copying the desktop applications or is there genuine innovativeness. (Jeff Atwood had an excellent post on this topic http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/000869.html)
Not sure if this helps but It’ll be interesting to hear your thoughts on any one of these topics.
These are some where I would be personally interested interested in hearing your thoughts.
1. N (10, 20, 30; depending on what time permits) most common User interface / usability issues in websites or web applications.
2. N (10, 20, 30; depending on what time permits) best web 2.0 websites / web application and what they did correctly.
3. Innovative design using HTML and CSS vs. Flex or Silverlight based RIA. Both have their own place and most designers miss the point of what to use where.
4. Based on Robby’s idea – Striking a User interface vs. usability balanace. i.e. “look pretty vs. usable” experience and striking a balance between the two.
5. N (10, 20, 30 depending on what time permits) fundamental usability tips every developer should be aware of – even if he is not a usability specialist.
6. Innovation with Less – Examples where innovation in user interface and usability has been achived by removing elements not by adding more of them. The minimalist user interface and user experience apporach.
7. Usability for startups – promoting a culture where usability is considered a first class citizen much like other development functions.
8. From nowhere to somewhere or somewhere to nowhere – examples of a few applications on the web which have imrpooved tremendously in terms of user interface and usability vs. a few which have gone down hill. Lessons learnt and mistakes.
9. Usability during product evolution – working on keeping your product user friendly as you move from one version to another.
10. N (10, 20, 30; depending on what time permits) real word ushe ability examples which can be adopted on the web. Examples of devices, billboard, sign boards and anything else which shows innovative usability in real world and how that can be brought into your web applications.
11. Next Gen user interface and usability on the desktop – WPF and other technologies and what they are doing to take usability to the next level. In browser experience vs. out of browser experience. Is web primarily – are mordern day web applications merely copying the desktop applications or is there genuine innovativeness. (Jeff Atwood had an excellent post on this topic -http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/000869.html)
Not sure if this helps but It’ll be interesting to hear your thoughts on any one of these topics.
These are some where I would be personally interested interested in hearing your thoughts.
1. N (10, 20, 30; depending on what time permits) most common User interface / usability issues in websites or web applications.
2. N (10, 20, 30; depending on what time permits) best web 2.0 websites / web application and what they did correctly.
3. Innovative design using HTML and CSS vs. Flex or Silverlight based RIA. Both have their own place and most designers miss the point of what to use where.
4. Based on Robby’s idea – Striking a User interface vs. usability balanace. i.e. “look pretty vs. usable” experience and striking a balance between the two.
5. N (10, 20, 30 depending on what time permits) fundamental usability tips every developer should be aware of – even if he is not a usability specialist.
6. Innovation with Less – Examples where innovation in user interface and usability has been achived by removing elements not by adding more of them. The minimalist user interface and user experience apporach.
7. Usability for startups – promoting a culture where usability is considered a first class citizen much like other development functions.
8. From nowhere to somewhere or somewhere to nowhere – examples of a few applications on the web which have imrpooved tremendously in terms of user interface and usability vs. a few which have gone down hill. Lessons learnt and mistakes.
9. Usability during product evolution – working on keeping your product user friendly as you move from one version to another.
10. N (10, 20, 30; depending on what time permits) real word ushe ability examples which can be adopted on the web. Examples of devices, billboard, sign boards and anything else which shows innovative usability in real world and how that can be brought into your web applications.
11. Next Gen user interface and usability on the desktop – WPF and other technologies and what they are doing to take usability to the next level. In browser experience vs. out of browser experience. Is web primarily – are mordern day web applications merely copying the desktop applications or is there genuine innovativeness. (Jeff Atwood had an excellent post on this topic http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/000869.html)
Not sure if this helps but It’ll be interesting to hear your thoughts on any one of these topics.
The Quick, the Cheap, and the Insightful: Conducting Usability Tests in the Wild
UI, science, and intuition.
UIE is very focused on tracking-analysis studies of why folks react to interfaces in a particular way; their Scent of Information work, I think, is seminal. If you were to start from your Myths of Innovation work and combine that with UIE’s approach to getting real data around understanding UI functionality, it would be a terrific session.