Hello folks, we hope you're all well and busy. Did you see the announcement from a local start-up http://www.litl.com/ ? It's a very unique & interesting design which piqued our curiosity. We've arranged an open demo and Q&A session with them. Please join us at the MIT Stata building cafe on Thursday December 3rd at 6:30pm to get a chance to play with and ask questions about the litl computer.
In addition to a conversation about the thinking behind the litl computer we'd like to start a working group to discuss http://processing.org/ We've been thinking about the best way to put on a Processing tutorial for IxDesigners and want to open up that conversation to the community. We're looking for interested parties to join us in defining the vision, goals and format of a series of workshops to be held next year. Heard of Processing but not sure what it can do - check this out! http://www.vimeo.com/6239027
So, we hope to see you at the Stata center at 6:30pm Dec 3rd and at some point we'll take the meeting over to the Miracle of Science for food and discussion on all things IxD (inc Processing!)
Map: http://ow.ly/DnLC
/BostonIxDA
Wednesday, November 18, 2009
Wednesday, August 19, 2009
Designing for Life: A Lecture and Design Workshop.
Let's face it: The world is a pretty complicated place. As designers, we play an increasingly important role in how that complicated world is shaped, understood, and experienced by millions of individuals every day. The software interfaces, web sites, physical products, and intangible services we create have a huge impact on the way people live their lives. How does this prepare us to address the profound issues humanity is facing?
IxDA Boston and Roundarch are proud to welcome distinguished interaction designer and former CMU and IIT professor Marc Rettig as the first half of a two-part event addressing these issues and more. In the September event, Marc will talk about his experience in changing the way he and his firm define the success of their work: from “ship something people like,” to “establish a measurable improvement in quality of life.” This means applying research and design methods to the social contexts of daily life, and to the social contexts in which products and services are created. It means working with complex, inter-related systems that are larger than the scope of any single organization. It means finding ways to understand the world beyond mechanistic, entity-relationship kinds of approaches. It means attention to human relationships and quality of communication become threads in the project plan, peer to design and development. And it means embarking on a deeply personal journey.
Please join us as we explore the ways that designers can create a meaningful, sustainable, positive difference in life. Note that there is a limit of 40 attendees for this event, you must RSVP and there is a cover charge of $10. Food will be provided courtesy of Mad*Pow
Where: Involution Studios, Arlington, MA
When: 6:30 on the 24th of September 2009
RSVP
About our speaker
Marc Rettig is a co-founder of Fit Associates, LLC. Fit’s intention is to lead, nurture, connect and equip conscious organizations for the greatest impact for the common good. Marc’s 26-year career has been guided by an interest in people, systems, communication, anthropology and the power of design. After a first career in software systems, he has spent more than a decade as a designer of projects, interactions, products, services, experiences, and transformations. He has taught both lecture and studio courses at Carnegie Mellon’s Graduate School of Design (where he was the 2003 Nierenberg Distinguished Chair of Design) and the Institute of Design, IIT in Chicago. Marc served as Chief Experience Officer of the pace-setting user experience consultancy HannaHodge, where he was responsible for the firm’s user-centered process, team culture, and research initiatives. He was a Director of User Experience at Cambridge Technology Partners. Prior to that he was a consultant with seeSpace, VP of Design for Digital Knowledge Assets, and a Senior Architect in Andersen Consulting’s Advanced Technologies Group. He frequently speaks and conducts hands-on workshops in industry and academic settings around the world. Marc currently serves on the advisory boards of UXNet, The Interaction Design Association, and Rosenfeld Media, and is a Contributing Editor to Interactions magazine.
IxDA Boston and Roundarch are proud to welcome distinguished interaction designer and former CMU and IIT professor Marc Rettig as the first half of a two-part event addressing these issues and more. In the September event, Marc will talk about his experience in changing the way he and his firm define the success of their work: from “ship something people like,” to “establish a measurable improvement in quality of life.” This means applying research and design methods to the social contexts of daily life, and to the social contexts in which products and services are created. It means working with complex, inter-related systems that are larger than the scope of any single organization. It means finding ways to understand the world beyond mechanistic, entity-relationship kinds of approaches. It means attention to human relationships and quality of communication become threads in the project plan, peer to design and development. And it means embarking on a deeply personal journey.
Please join us as we explore the ways that designers can create a meaningful, sustainable, positive difference in life. Note that there is a limit of 40 attendees for this event, you must RSVP and there is a cover charge of $10. Food will be provided courtesy of Mad*Pow
Where: Involution Studios, Arlington, MA
When: 6:30 on the 24th of September 2009
RSVP
About our speaker
Marc Rettig is a co-founder of Fit Associates, LLC. Fit’s intention is to lead, nurture, connect and equip conscious organizations for the greatest impact for the common good. Marc’s 26-year career has been guided by an interest in people, systems, communication, anthropology and the power of design. After a first career in software systems, he has spent more than a decade as a designer of projects, interactions, products, services, experiences, and transformations. He has taught both lecture and studio courses at Carnegie Mellon’s Graduate School of Design (where he was the 2003 Nierenberg Distinguished Chair of Design) and the Institute of Design, IIT in Chicago. Marc served as Chief Experience Officer of the pace-setting user experience consultancy HannaHodge, where he was responsible for the firm’s user-centered process, team culture, and research initiatives. He was a Director of User Experience at Cambridge Technology Partners. Prior to that he was a consultant with seeSpace, VP of Design for Digital Knowledge Assets, and a Senior Architect in Andersen Consulting’s Advanced Technologies Group. He frequently speaks and conducts hands-on workshops in industry and academic settings around the world. Marc currently serves on the advisory boards of UXNet, The Interaction Design Association, and Rosenfeld Media, and is a Contributing Editor to Interactions magazine.
Friday, April 3, 2009
Canceled: Bookswap: Josh Porter discuss his book, April 23rd 7pm
This event has been canceled
Joshua Porter will be discussing his book Designing for the Social Web http://tinyurl.com/5hvqur followed by Q&A and discussion - send us your question in advance if you cant make it.
There will be a raffle for some books from Morgan Kaufmann. You are entered in the raffle when you signup for the bookswap, send us a question and when you RSVP. Three chances to win!
When: Thursday April 23rd at 7pm
Where: Trident bookstore on Newbury St, Boston. http://tinyurl.com/dbnab2
RSVP and/or Questions for the Author: http://tinyurl.com/cqdwgu
In addition to the book discussion we've setup a bookswap to allow the community to share used design related books. Here's how it works; First you list the books you are willing to share on http://www.librarything.com, and tag them with ixda_boston_bookclub. Give us your librarything url and we'll share it with the community. People can then parse the list of books and then contact the sharer.
There is no requirement to sign up to this but if you are interested, please follow these steps:
We would like to thank Eva Kaniasty for first suggesting this and taking on the task of organizing the first event. In the future, we aim to make this a self-organizing social where members can connect, share, and propose topics for the book club.
Thank you, and we are looking forward to seeing you on the 23rd of April!
Joshua Porter will be discussing his book Designing for the Social Web http://tinyurl.com/5hvqur followed by Q&A and discussion - send us your question in advance if you cant make it.
There will be a raffle for some books from Morgan Kaufmann. You are entered in the raffle when you signup for the bookswap, send us a question and when you RSVP. Three chances to win!
When: Thursday April 23rd at 7pm
Where: Trident bookstore on Newbury St, Boston. http://tinyurl.com/dbnab2
RSVP and/or Questions for the Author: http://tinyurl.com/cqdwgu
In addition to the book discussion we've setup a bookswap to allow the community to share used design related books. Here's how it works; First you list the books you are willing to share on http://www.librarything.com, and tag them with ixda_boston_bookclub. Give us your librarything url and we'll share it with the community. People can then parse the list of books and then contact the sharer.
There is no requirement to sign up to this but if you are interested, please follow these steps:
- (optional) Create a catalog of books on the free service http://www.librarything.com
- Become a Boston IxDA book club member by signing up http://spreadsheets.google.com/viewform?key=pQG39RalBf4Mo46qeqoPoVw&hl=en
- To view a list of members and to explore the books available, check out the http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=pQG39RalBf4Mo46qeqoPoVw
- Interested in borrowing a book? Contact the owner and meet them at the event or arrange a separate time.
We would like to thank Eva Kaniasty for first suggesting this and taking on the task of organizing the first event. In the future, we aim to make this a self-organizing social where members can connect, share, and propose topics for the book club.
Thank you, and we are looking forward to seeing you on the 23rd of April!
Wednesday, April 1, 2009
Event Report: Using comics to communicate design
We “designers” typically have all kinds of ideas floating around in our grey matter from one moment to the next. Sometimes they directly apply to the project we’re working on, other times, not so much. One big challenge we have is figuring out the best way to get them out of our heads and into the heads of others. In other words, how do we communicate them well enough to be discussed, iterated, grown, and maybe even (whoa, Nellie) prototyped?
I could list a few ways we commonly share ideas, but I won’t waste this space with the things you already know and use daily. Lately, there has been a trend in our Interaction Design discipline to borrow successful methods from other domains and use them in ours. For example, we have sketching as taught in Industrial Design, storyboarding that comes from movie making, and now comic strips that come from, well, comic strips.
“Comic strips?” you ask. “But, we want people to take us seriously!”
IxDA Boston decided to investigate this, and invited Amy Cueva, the CXO of the design consultancy Mad*Pow, to share her experiences with using this method. Autodesk Waltham kindly hosted the event in the new building on the evening of March 19th (and attendees got a sneak peek of the almost-finished CBC Boston Gallery!).
Amy shared with us how she came across the method, how she successfully uses this tool in her design business to communicate ideas, and what the benefits and limitations of this tool can be. She was quick to give credit to Kevin Cheng who has pioneered the use of comics in design, himself originally writing comic spoofs on the Interaction Design community at his website http://www.ok-cancel.com.
Amy gave us lots of great examples in her presentation and got us all walking the talk in a couple of breakout sessions along the way. While we all wished we could actually draw as well as Kevin (and his co-conspirator Tom Chi), Amy assured us that we needn’t fret about our lack of artistry because we would use the drawing skills we learned in second grade to create our own comic strips.
For the most part, she was right.
Amy has kindly shared with us her presentation, some comic strip templates, and these additional links:
Lisa
PS. I could have been crafty and written this post in comic strip form, but I’m no Amy Cueva or Kevin Cheng.
I could list a few ways we commonly share ideas, but I won’t waste this space with the things you already know and use daily. Lately, there has been a trend in our Interaction Design discipline to borrow successful methods from other domains and use them in ours. For example, we have sketching as taught in Industrial Design, storyboarding that comes from movie making, and now comic strips that come from, well, comic strips.
“Comic strips?” you ask. “But, we want people to take us seriously!”
IxDA Boston decided to investigate this, and invited Amy Cueva, the CXO of the design consultancy Mad*Pow, to share her experiences with using this method. Autodesk Waltham kindly hosted the event in the new building on the evening of March 19th (and attendees got a sneak peek of the almost-finished CBC Boston Gallery!).
Amy shared with us how she came across the method, how she successfully uses this tool in her design business to communicate ideas, and what the benefits and limitations of this tool can be. She was quick to give credit to Kevin Cheng who has pioneered the use of comics in design, himself originally writing comic spoofs on the Interaction Design community at his website http://www.ok-cancel.com.
Amy gave us lots of great examples in her presentation and got us all walking the talk in a couple of breakout sessions along the way. While we all wished we could actually draw as well as Kevin (and his co-conspirator Tom Chi), Amy assured us that we needn’t fret about our lack of artistry because we would use the drawing skills we learned in second grade to create our own comic strips.
For the most part, she was right.
Amy has kindly shared with us her presentation, some comic strip templates, and these additional links:
- Amy's Presentation (pdf)
- Comic Templates
- Kevin Cheng’s Site
- Comic Creator
- Out of the Box Comics Library, Courtesy of Martin Hardee and Sun Microsystems
- Comic Fonts
Cheers,
Lisa
PS. I could have been crafty and written this post in comic strip form, but I’m no Amy Cueva or Kevin Cheng.
Monday, March 23, 2009
Josh Porter discusses his book at our inaugural Bookclub
To promote the free exchange of ideas in the local user experience community, Boston IxDA is temporarily changing the format of our social events. Whereas we would normally meet up to wax poetic about IxD at a local pub, we will be now hosting focused Design discussions on the backdrop of a User Experience book club in a more fitting venue.
The first event in the series will have Joshua Porter discussing his book Designing for the Social Web http://tinyurl.com/5hvqur. Josh will be giving a talk about the book and hosting a Q&A session with a little twist. Watch this space for more details!
When: Thursday April 23rd at 7pm
Where: Trident bookstore on Newbury St, Boston. http://tinyurl.com/dbnab2
The Logistics:
We have a great list of authors lined up for future events, however, that is only half of the new format. We've had a few inquiries about the possibility of sharing or swapping UX Books. We've put together a framework that will enable people to connect and meet this goal. Here's how it works; First you list the books you are willing to share on http://www.librarything.com, and tag them with ixda_boston_bookclub. Give us your librarything url and we'll share it with the community. People can then parse the list of book sharers and then contact them via email.
There is no requirement to sign up to this but if you are interested, please follow these steps:
- (optional) Create a catalog of books on the free service http://www.librarything.com
- Become a Boston IxDA book club member by signing up http://spreadsheets.google.com/viewform?key=pQG39RalBf4Mo46qeqoPoVw&hl=en
- To view a list of members and to explore the books available, check out the http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=pQG39RalBf4Mo46qeqoPoVw
- Interested in borrowing a book? Contact the owner and meet them at the event or arrange a separate time.
Note: It is up to book owners to track who they lend books to.
We would like to thank Eva Kaniasty for first suggesting this and taking on the task of organizing the first event. In the future, we aim to make this a self-organizing social where members can connect, share, and propose topics for the book club.
Thank you, and we are looking forward to seeing you on the 23rd of April!
Thursday, March 5, 2009
Funny Business - Using Comics in the Design
Many of the challenges we face as designers relate not to the quality of our work, but rather to the communication of our ideas. Boston IxDA is thrilled to host Amy Cueva, Co-Founder and Chief Experience Officer at Mad*Pow, who will be conducting a “how to” session on how to get going with comics from a strategy, process and tools perspective.
When: http://tinyurl.com/dz8ba6
Thursday, March 19th. 6:30 socializing, 7pm start.
Where: http://tinyurl.com/cv4wro
Autodesk. 1560 Trapelo Road, Waltham, MA.
Event Description:
For years, usability professionals and interaction designers alike have been using flow diagrams to demonstrate existing and proposed task flows. We have integrated the great thinking from Kevin Cheng into our design process by using the comic strip model to illustrate points of user frustration with existing flows, recommend new approaches, and communicate how the corporation and technology might support the solution. It has proven to be a very engaging communication, combining the persona, their context and mental model, other influencers, their multi-channel interactions and a high level start to interface design.
This event is open to all and RSVPing is not required. However in the event of a last minute change keep follow us on http://twitter.com/bostonixda or sign up to our mailing list here: http://tinyurl.com/azr77t
Amy's Bio:
Amy partners with clients like Google, Aetna, Fidelity, and Monster to create strong cross-channel digital strategies, first class user experiences, and streamlined internal processes. She built Mad*Pow's user-centered design methodology as the vehicle to synergize business goals, customer needs, and technology requirements. She is the secretary and one of the charter members of the NH UPA, is speaking at UPA 2009, and was selected as one of Mass High Tech’s Women to Watch in 2009.
Prior to Mad*Pow, Amy worked for Putnam Investments simplifying experiences for both investors and employees. She also spent time at MicroArts, Sapient, and Sun Microsystems designing business to business financial applications, marketing sites, and intranet sites. Prior to starting her career, Amy was privileged to have the opportunity to study art history, painting and architecture at La Sorbonne in Paris, France.
When: http://tinyurl.com/dz8ba6
Thursday, March 19th. 6:30 socializing, 7pm start.
Where: http://tinyurl.com/cv4wro
Autodesk. 1560 Trapelo Road, Waltham, MA.
Event Description:
For years, usability professionals and interaction designers alike have been using flow diagrams to demonstrate existing and proposed task flows. We have integrated the great thinking from Kevin Cheng into our design process by using the comic strip model to illustrate points of user frustration with existing flows, recommend new approaches, and communicate how the corporation and technology might support the solution. It has proven to be a very engaging communication, combining the persona, their context and mental model, other influencers, their multi-channel interactions and a high level start to interface design.
This event is open to all and RSVPing is not required. However in the event of a last minute change keep follow us on http://twitter.com/bostonixda or sign up to our mailing list here: http://tinyurl.com/azr77t
Amy's Bio:
Amy partners with clients like Google, Aetna, Fidelity, and Monster to create strong cross-channel digital strategies, first class user experiences, and streamlined internal processes. She built Mad*Pow's user-centered design methodology as the vehicle to synergize business goals, customer needs, and technology requirements. She is the secretary and one of the charter members of the NH UPA, is speaking at UPA 2009, and was selected as one of Mass High Tech’s Women to Watch in 2009.
Prior to Mad*Pow, Amy worked for Putnam Investments simplifying experiences for both investors and employees. She also spent time at MicroArts, Sapient, and Sun Microsystems designing business to business financial applications, marketing sites, and intranet sites. Prior to starting her career, Amy was privileged to have the opportunity to study art history, painting and architecture at La Sorbonne in Paris, France.
Friday, January 30, 2009
Sex, Money, and Storytelling
Time and Date:
Saturday 10am-noon
28.Feb.09
Location: http://tinyurl.com/6z3f3
Involution Studios Boston
661 Mass Ave, 3rd floor
Arlington, MA 02476
We know you like sex, and we all like money, but... storytelling? Yep. Storytelling. It's a way to open up the design process to new ideas and new ways of listening to users. And that leads to a better user experience. Participants will learn the importance of stories and storytelling in the design process, will learn the basics of telling stories, and will leave with the experience of having crafted a story that addresses a design problem.
This two-hour workshop will include:
The role of storytelling in user experience design
The power of listening
Why your audience matters
Using imagery for powerful stories
Using stories as part of design
Wrapup and discussion
Exercises in listening, telling stories and designing from stories will keep the session interactive. Come prepared to work.
Laptops, iphones, and other comm devices are required to be turned off (and preferably left at home).
Saturday 10am-noon
28.Feb.09
Location: http://tinyurl.com/6z3f3
Involution Studios Boston
661 Mass Ave, 3rd floor
Arlington, MA 02476
We know you like sex, and we all like money, but... storytelling? Yep. Storytelling. It's a way to open up the design process to new ideas and new ways of listening to users. And that leads to a better user experience. Participants will learn the importance of stories and storytelling in the design process, will learn the basics of telling stories, and will leave with the experience of having crafted a story that addresses a design problem.
This two-hour workshop will include:
The role of storytelling in user experience design
The power of listening
Why your audience matters
Using imagery for powerful stories
Using stories as part of design
Wrapup and discussion
Exercises in listening, telling stories and designing from stories will keep the session interactive. Come prepared to work.
Laptops, iphones, and other comm devices are required to be turned off (and preferably left at home).
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