boston.ixda events

Prototyping & Design Critique Workshop

2010-04-21T07:54:00.000-07:00

RSVP: http://tinyurl.com/y9ot9hu

On May 6th we will hold a collaborative workshop on Prototyping and Design Critiques.
Prototyping: We will give you an assignment, based on the results of last months event, and ask you to create prototypes. This is an opportunity for you to both share your tips & trick as well as learn from others in small teams. Have you read about an interesting sketching technique but not had a project to try it out on? this is your chance to experiment!

Design Critique: This can an extremely important part of the design process but often overlooked as it is difficult to put in to practice in many workplaces. It requires careful use of language and a focus on the work at hand.

Once the teams have finished prototyping they will present in front of a panel. We will observe how to give productive feedback on a design and how to defend decisions.

This is also an opportunity for you to 'Design For Good'. As with last month where the qualitative data gathered from the interviews helped us create our personas, storyboard & design brief. The prototypes you create at this event will be used by IxDA Boston's side project to progress our effort - we need your collective expertise to solve our design problem!

We will have a couple of books ( Bill Buxton book “Sketching User Experiences” and the Jon Kolko book “Thoughts in Interaction Design” ) to give away for some of the best solutions.

Sketching material will be provided but please feel free to bring along your own prototyping toolkit.

Date: Thursday May 6th, 2010

Time: 6:30pm-8:30
Place: http://www.involutionstudios.com/index.php/#/contact/boston
Light food and refreshments will be provided by RoundArch
Note: This announcement is going out to both our local mailing list and the new local site on IxDA.org we will continue to use both for 2010 and then discontinue direct announcements from our gmail account. We encourage you to sign up on http://www.ixda.org/local/boston-ixda which will allow you to better manage the mail you receive from the IxDA.
Looking forward to seeing you on May 6th! /bostonixda

Practical User Research Interview Techniques

2010-02-15T20:51:00.000-08:00

Date: Thursday, March 25, 2010

Speaker: Mike Hawley from Mad*Pow
Time: 6pm to 6.30pm, socializing. 6.30pm to 8.00pm, interview practice
Place: Microsoft New England R&D Center, One Memorial Drive, Cambridge, MA 02142 (http://tiny.cc/JiAOd)

Audience: Primarily IXDA members and UX practitioners

Light snacks sponsored by Mad*Pow

RSVP: http://tiny.cc/fH6ef

Event Description

Interviewing is a skill that is at the core of a wide variety of research methods in user-centered design including stakeholder interviews, contextual inquiry, usability testing and focus groups. Consequently, a researcher’s skill in conducting interviews has a direct impact on the quality and accuracy of research findings and subsequent decisions about design. A skilled interviewer will be able to conduct an interview that uncovers the key elements of a participant’s perspective on a topic in a manner that is unbiased by the interviewer. User researchers and user-centered designers are hired for this very ability.

But how do you know if you are a good interviewer? How do you know that you are asking the right questions in the right way? You want to be unbiased, but how can you be sure? Are you maximizing time you have with participants to uncover insights that will help transform your design? During this session, we will review research interview best practices and share an interview evaluation worksheet for coaching and staff development we developed. Meeting attendees will have the opportunity test their interviewing skills and provide constructive feedback to others during an interactive session.

UX Show and Tell at Maark, Boston

2010-02-15T07:59:00.000-08:00

Time: March 4, 2010 from 6:30pm to 8:30pm
Location: Maark
Street: 109 State Street, Suite 2
City/Town: Boston
Website or Map: http://maps.google.com/maps/p…
Phone: (617) 723-2122‎
Event Type: workshop
Organized By: Chris Avore

RSVP: http://uxshowandtell.ning.com

Event Description:

UX Show & Tell is a casual workshop that’s all about the work. Show shortcuts. Ask what to annotate in a wireframe. Draft scenarios and user stories, and identify one from the other. Get feedback from practitioners instead of stakeholders and engage in discussions on process and strategy.

Bring your deliverables to either get useful, implementable feedback or to show unique solutions to potentially common design problems. Drafts/incomplete work welcome.

We'll have a round-table discussion where one person tells the group if they need help with a design problem, or if they are sharing a unique solution that's worked well for them in the past. That person will then take a few minutes to walk through what he or she is sharing and where help is needed, if appropriate.

Questions and dialogue from the rest of the group are expected and encouraged--this isn't meant to be one person presenting to an audience!

If you don't want to bring anything to show, you're more than welcome to attend and contribute to the discussion.

We'll decide later where to take the discussions after the workshop is officially over at 8:30 PM.

As always, all current or prospective user experience designers, information architects, web developers, content strategists, graphic designers, etc. are encouraged to share deliverables or just attend.

Paper deliverables are perfectly acceptable, and we'll also have wireless internet, a projector and screen available for showing work. Drafts, incomplete work, personal projects and prototypes are all welcome for sharing.

December Social: Litl computer demo & Processing Working Group

2009-11-18T07:33:00.000-08:00

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

Designing for Life: A Lecture and Design Workshop.

2009-08-19T07:46:00.001-07:00

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.

Canceled: Bookswap: Josh Porter discuss his book, April 23rd 7pm

2009-04-03T11:01:00.000-07:00

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:

(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!

Event Report: Using comics to communicate design

2009-04-01T13:15:00.000-07:00

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:

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.

Josh Porter discusses his book at our inaugural Bookclub

2009-03-23T11:26:00.000-07:00

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!

Funny Business - Using Comics in the Design

2009-03-05T17:49:00.000-08:00

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.

Sex, Money, and Storytelling

2009-01-30T10:05:00.000-08:00

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).

jQuery for Designers with John Resig

2008-09-04T06:52:00.000-07:00

Boston IxDA invites you to a UI prototyping workshop using jQuery with its creator John Resig on the 11th of September at MIT Building 3.

What is jQuery?
Its a javascript library that enables designers & developers to easily build or reuse some of the most common interaction patterns found on the web today.

For some examples of the power of jQuery, see; http://ui.jquery.com/demos

Why might jQuery be of interest/use to a designer? While we wait for Adobe Thermo et al to usher in the golden age of WYSIWYG 'prototype' to 'shipping code' workflows, jQuery is achieving this today with a minimal amount of code manipulation, often just copy'n'paste. If you want tighter coordination with your developers or desire to reduce the amount of throw-away work by presenting your designs in a format that can be picked up by the developer then look no further. If you've worked up some html you'll be more than at home dropping in a jQuery pattern to produce more interactive designs after this tutorial.

The power of open source...
jQuery is an extensible framework, people around the world are contributing to the framework everyday. For example;
Specify or configure your designs colour pallete in http://ui.jquery.com/themeroller and it will automagicaly build the CSS needed for your jQuery powered UI.
Also, here's 20 3rd party examples of ready to use UI patterns, from light boxes to image libraries:
http://speckyboy.com/2008 /07 /21 /20 -amazing -jquery -plugins -and -65 -excellent -jquery -resources /

John Resig http://ejohn.org/about/ , will give a 2 hour tutorial for designers on the 11th of September at the MIT building 3. We have a strict limit of 58 seats for this event so I strongly recommend RSVP'ing.

Additional resources worth looking at ahead of the tutorial; http://docs.jquery.com/Tutorials:jQuery_For_Designers http://jqueryfordesigners.com/
http://www.webdesignerwall.com/demo/jquery/

When: 6:30-8:30, 11th of September
Where: Room 3-133 Map
77 Massachusetts Avenue
Cambridge, MA 02139-4307
RSVP

Boston IxDA invites you to Designers Anonymous, 7-9pm August 14th, Boston.

2008-08-08T10:08:00.000-07:00

The IxDA Boston crew is rather excited to announce our August event, Boston's Designers Anonymous! a support group for those with user centered issues.

After some great 'big picture' presentations at our nanoConference, lets make it more personal and take some time to share what makes each of us passionate about design. Boston's Designers Anonymous is an event where we can share stories from "The moment I realized I wanted to be a Designer..." to "Tough challenges and beautiful solutions from my portfolio", and anything in between.

This will be an open mic style event with up to five minutes per person, and the goal is to introduce ourselves; it's not a critical review of our work.

This event is sponsored by http://www.roundarch.com/ and food is provided. When: Thursday, August 14th from 7 – 9 pm.
Where: Cottonwood Restaurant & Cafe – 222 Berkeley St. downtown Boston http://www.cottonwoodboston.com/
Map: http://tinyurl.com/6xgrqv

Please use this form to RSVP
http://tinyurl.com/62lmtq

Looking forward to getting a better idea of what makes us all tick!

Cheers,
Boston IxDA

Picnic in the Park

2008-07-21T13:24:00.000-07:00

Got party?

Boston Interactions Summer Pot-Luck Picnic

Please join us for an evening of summer fun, food, conversation, and networking that you won’t want to miss.
July 22, 2008 6:00 PM till Dusk
Danehy Park in Cambridge (near Alewife T)
No RSVP Required, No Charge

Sponsored by the following organizations:

• BostonCHI
• UPA Boston
• UPA NH h
• NEC HFES
• Boston IxDA
• Boston-IA
• UXNet Boston
• STC Boston

It’s a pot-luck so please bring food to share. Make it at home or pick it up on the way. There is a Whole Foods in the neighborhood. We will provide drinks, cups, paper plates, napkins, plastic forks, knives, spoons. Sorry, no alcohol is allowed in the park.

Directions to Danehy Park in Cambridge
Take Route 2 to the Concord Ave. rotary (Sozio appliances). Exit on Concord Ave. (just to the right of the generic-brand gas station).
Go 7 tiny blocks and turn left at the traffic light onto Walden Street.
Take your first left at a light onto Sherman Street. Near the next (possibly flashing) light, turn left into the Danehy Park Sherman Street lot.
If this lot is full, use the map below to find additional lots, look for legal on-street parking, or park near the movie theater in the Fresh Pond Shopping Center & walk up New Street & through the park.

Finding Us Inside the Park
Danehy Park is quite large.
If you park in the Sherman Street lot, just walk into the park along the main path & look for the bright orange tablecloths on the right.

nanoConference event report

2008-07-03T08:44:00.001-07:00

IxDA Boston is pleased to announce our most successful event to date. We were honored to have over 75 local designers, developers and thinkers come to see 9 talks on methodologies, techniques, findings and new technologies. For those who could not attend we will be releasing the audio & slide decks as we produce them, the first link is at the bottom of this post.

We would like to thank our event sponsors http://madpow.net/ and http://www.brightcove.com/ . This was our second event at https://www.bentley.edu/ and we're very grateful for their continued support. We're very thankful for the hard work Chauncey Wilson put in to moderating the event and the materials assistance from Juhan Sonin.

That all said, every one's efforts would have been in vain if it wasn't for the fantastic content the 9 speakers produced on the night...

1) With his background in distance learning and visualization at MIT, and now an aesthetic engineer/creative director-type at R&D outfit MITRE, Juhan Sonin http://www.mit.edu/~juhan/bio.html kicked off with his insights on how to inject design into an Open Source project and set a blistering pace getting through +30 slides in 10 minutes. As with all the talks we will be publishing the slides and audio on slideshare in the coming weeks. For now you can see Juhan's deck in his flickr account;
http://www.flickr.com/photos/juhansonin/2571867436/

2) Next up was the first of our sponsors http://www.brightcove.com/ Jeremy Merle (Art Director) & David Adler (Information Architect) walked through the agile processes they have in place, what wasnt working and how they fixed it. The main take away was to plan ahead, gather feedback and foster collaboration from team members to truly get the most from the sprints. http://www.flickr.com/photos/jeckman/2621609985/

3) Ian Muir, lead 'devigner', at http://www.sundermedia.com/ gave a very witty breakdown of the Designer-Developer relationship. He had the audience laughing and nodding sagely at the same time. Essentially its about understanding the gaps in the respective roles to avoid miscommunication. http://www.flickr.com/photos/pauric/2633369681

4) Kris Engdahl, Usability Consultant, Bentley Design and Usability Center & Malini Gargeshwari, Senior Interaction Designer, Oracle Corporation talked about using Reality Maps for Task Analysis. The audience was given a walk through of this non-visual storyboard and how it helps keep focus on task flows. We are probably to ask Kris & Malini to come back and give a workshop on this collaboration tool that allows for easy comparison of alternative flows or with current process/flow. http://www.flickr.com/photos/jeckman/2622433842

5) Michael Hawley, VP Experience Design, from our second sponsor http://madpow.net/ talked about Next Generation Navigational Paradigms. A side by side comparison of familiar/traditional interactions & next-gen visual rich designs. Then he walked through a design and how they balanced the customers desires to make a bold statement with the users needs to navigate and interact with the brand. I'd also like to note that Mad*Pow were a sponsor and Interaction08 and it was great to see so many of the team come down to our event. http://www.flickr.com/photos/jeckman/2622433904/

6) Christa Houlahan, http://www.cmhoulahan.com/ Senior UX designer at Roundarch gave a thought provoking look in to what 'search' can do when its tightly integrated with content. Using FAST & Flex she demonstrated how with cheaper storage, faster indexing and more powerful search algorithms users are able to initiate, refine and preview results inline with content.

7) Matt McKeon: http://www.mattmckeon.com/about.html talked about Visualisation in the hands of the people based on his research at IBM. Many Eyes is a free and public website where anyone can upload their data, create a sophisticated interactive visualization in minutes, and share and discuss it with anyone else. Matt highlighted the implications for designers seeking adoption of innovative media by a wider audience. Instead of trying to create a community from scratch, it's often a better idea to empower users to re-purpose the content they create in a variety of contexts and roles.

8) Jesse Beach (IxDA Boston's CTO!) gave a 'HTML5 Heads Up'. With the projected date of release for the standard set for late 2010 and a raft of new features already under development in major browsers, the question arises "What does this update to the workhorse of the web mean for Experience Design?". He talked about the differences between HTML4.X/XHTML and HTML5 that a designer might find significant and the changes that hold the potential to improve user experience and our daily work experience.

9) Jared Spool, http://www.uie.com/ , delivered and impressively light yet powerful approach to comparing multiple designs and effectively evaluating the most suitable design.
You can hear Jared and see the slide deck on slideshare: http://tinyurl.com/68w4jt we will publish the rest of the presentations as and when we upload them - watch this space.

To wrap up we had all the speakers form a panel and take questions from the audience; http://www.flickr.com/photos/pauric/2633377703/ and it was great to see so many stay after the talks to discuss the inspirational content presented.

IxDA Boston is taking a little hiatus for July but fear not, you can get your geek snack on at the Boston Interactions Picnic In the Park. 6-8pm Danehy Park, Cambridge with members from BostonCHI, UPA Boston & NH, NEC HFES, Boston-IA, Web Innovators Group, IxDA Boston, UXnet Boston & STC Boston are invited. We're back in September with a social and informal discussion hosted by Christa Houlahan from Roundarch and have a pretty impressive schedule planned for the second half of the year.

Regards /pauric

A night of short talks - Bentley College, 6-9pm, June 26th

2008-06-08T05:52:00.000-07:00

IxDA Boston is very pleased to announce our first nanoConference, a
night of 10 minute talks examining hot button topics for designers,
moderated by Chauncey Wilson.

As you can see we've got a great set of speakers presenting on topics
ranging from research to evaluation, from communication to process...

Juhan Sonin: Design and Open Source Software
Jeremy Merle: Designing in an Agile Environment.
Ian Muir: Designer-Developer collaboration
Jesse Beach: HTML5 Heads Up
Jared Spool: What's the Best Way to Compare Multiple Design
Alternatives? Christa Houlahan: Search, Beyond the Box
Matt McKeon: Many Eyes, Visualisation in the hands of the people.
Michael Hawley: Next Generation Interaction Paradigms Kris Engdahl:
Using Reality Maps for Task Analysis

We'd like to thank our sponsors Mad*Pow & Brightcove and Bentley
College for hosting

Here's the flyer for the event if you want to post it up around your
office or are just interested in more detail on the individual talks
Flyer: http://tinyurl.com/3uxvdn

When: 6-9pm Thursday June 26th
Where: The LaCava building, Bentley College
Map: http://tinyurl.com/5zwolx

Please RSVP and we will update you with more information on directions
when we get them.
RSVP: http://tinyurl.com/47wa3c

Looking forward to seeing you there!

April Social

2008-04-14T08:07:00.000-07:00

We're sure you've noticed it's that time of year between snow storms. Help shake off the cabin fever with some cold beer and good food at Boston Beer Works

When: Thursday April 24th, 7pm (but feel free to come earlier too!)

Where: Boston Beer Works, 112 Canal St, Boston.

Map:* http://tinyurl.com/6fvxgs

It's an opportunity to connect and network with other local designers, implementors and thinkers. The Boston IxDA coordinators will also be there mapping out our next event and we invite you to contribute to the planning! Bring your ideas!

Looking forward to seeing you there!

/ IxDA Boston

In preparation for the Flex Tutorial

2008-03-26T07:52:00.000-07:00

Here is a link to the code we will be using in the class, please download it to your Flex environment: http://www.splendidnoise.com/flex/IxDA_Flex.zip

We will be providing a paper copy of the code for you to take notes during the tutorial as well as a cheat sheet for Flex code.

AIR, Flex & Thermo...

2008-03-16T07:06:00.000-07:00

In preparation for the tutorial on the 27th it might help to understand the approach Adobe is taking with RIA & Design. This video gives an overview of how the toolchain was applied to a Sony Ericsson site

"AIR, Flex and the forthcoming Thermo join Photoshop to make up the newest suite of Adobe tools for interface design. Check out the following video demonstration of the AIR and Flex at work on a Sony Ericsson website. The demo is from Raghunath Rao of Adobe in Bangalore, India."

Curtsy of ReadWriteWeb

Introduction to Flex for Designers class

2008-03-11T16:10:00.000-07:00

IxDA Boston is pleased to present a one-time Introduction to Flex for Designers class. Jesse Beach, a Boston IxDA group leader, will be teaching this class.

Flex is a platform that can be used to build interactive prototypes. There has been a very interesting discussion on the IxDA's website about how people are starting to use the Flex framework for rapid prototyping. Take a look through the thread to gain an understanding of how Flex is being used by other designers.

One thing we can guarantee you is that as an interaction designer, you will at some point in the near future be faced with involvement in the platform, so now is your opportunity to check it out. By the end of the class you will have built something similar to this.

**We are going to offer space at this class with a preference to those that can bring their own computer and willing to pair up with a classmate to work through the tutorial. However, if you are unable to bring your own laptop, do not worry!! We're aiming for a 2:1 or 3:1 ratio of people:laptops. If you are bringing a laptopto the class please follow these very important instructions on setting up the environment to be able to work properly during the class. This may seem very intimidating, but don't let it overwhelm you as we'll be adapting to the needs of the class and taking things one step at a time! If you have any issues or problems with the install, please let us know ASAP.

We look forward to seeing you there!

Where: RDVO
20 Holland Street, 4th Floor
Davis Square
Somerville, MA
When: Thursday March 27. 7-9pm (6:30 for pizza and socializing! )
What to Bring: Pencil/Notebook, Laptop (see important instructions below **) - if you have one

Interaction|08 Remix

2008-02-24T04:56:00.000-08:00

Did you attend Interaction08 and are still talking about it? Did you miss Interaction08 and wish you could have gone? Did you see all the speaker recording links and wish you had time to watch them?

Well, come join us for an evening of revisiting Interaction08! We'll be watching a speaker video or two, sharing an insight or two, and raising a pint (or two) .

All are welcome!

Look forward to seeing you there!
//Boston IxDA

What: Interaction08 remix!
When: Thursday 28th, February 7-9pm (come whenever you can) Where: Asgard Pub, 350 Massachusetts Ave. Cambridge, MA 02139, (617) 577-9100 http://tinyurl.com/3dp4dy
RSVP: http://boston.going.com/event-240790