UX and interaction designers @ HEL: The Interaction16-fun started

Sunset in Helsinki

Today I arrived at Helsinki for my first attendance at the Interaction-Conference organized by the IxDA.

After enjoying the sun in the afternoon with a nice run, the Interaction-Community already started coming together for the first evening event at the IDEAN office. They really have nice slogan...

"Life is too short for crappy UX!"

IDEAN and IBM invited for a get-together and Douglas Powel (Design Principal at IBM Design) presented how they are currently facilitating their design process.

Get-together at IDEAN office

Douglas Powell (@douglaspowell1) talked about "What more can Designers do?" in order to push borders and "move" into new areas.

Design is not something new for IBM - it started in the mid of the 20th century.

"Good design is good business." (Quote from 1966)

And todays philosophy of IBM is:

"The technology we use at work should be as delightful, intuitive and efficient as the techology we use the rest of our life."

The tactical formula to reach this goal is focusing on three parts: people, places and processes.

PEOPLE

IBM hired a lot of Designers - they have a 3 months' program (like a boot camp) to give the new employees the chance to "understand" IBM with all the related aspects. They have now 700 designers and are hiring more - 2/3 directly from the university.

PLACES

The designers will work in Studios - the workplace needs to be flexible (moveable whiteboards) and collaborative, with a lot of space to be creative.

PROCESSES

IBM created an IBM design language, which is available since early 2015 - it includes resource for vision, motion and interaction design. It's available at IBM.com/design.

A process resource is the IBM design thinking: it's design thinking but focusing on distributed teams and high speed (constant movement) - so the focus is speed & scale.
The IBM design thinking focuses on user outcomes, multidisciplinary team and restless reinvention (iterations) - the team need to "move" always; stagnation is the worst.

So Douglas Powell presented a good overview of how IBM is facilitating the design process and there are some interesting aspects - but I'm still curious if they are able to make the huge amount of "new" designer really productive.


So this evening was already a nice start with interesting discussions and I'm already looking forward to the first day of the conference tomorrow.

Thx IDEAN (@Idean) once again for hosting this nice evening.

UX Toolkit for Product Owners - a full-day workshop!

Personas

In October my team and I created the "UX Toolkit" - a collection of 10 UX methods that can be used in a project. In the toolkit we explain the method and give some basic information about it. In addition we provide some links and references at ux.techtalk.at.

Based on the toolkit and my talk at the Agile Tour Vienna 2015 I will do a full-day workshop called "UX Toolkit for Product Owners".  The main goal of the workshop is to learn the basics of 7 UX methods and practice them. In this workshop we will do end-user interviews, contextual inquiry, personas, scenarios and storyboards, wireframes, paper prototyping and some usability testing with end-users (with think-aloud).

This workshop is for everybody working in a project who want to put more focus towards the user: understanding the user and getting feedback early.


Wireframes

Some details:

• Workshop will be in German.
• Date: 7th of April, 9am - 4:30pm
• Location: TechTalk Vienna, Saturn Tower
• More information and registration (German)

Hope to see you :)

September Events: Barcamp.Digital, Playcamp & Innovation Games-Workshop

Next week Luke Hohmann is in Vienna and there are two interesting events you can meet him:

playcamp Vienna

Luke Hohmann

Friday, September 18th, 2015, 9 am to 5 pm

This one-day conference is all about Innovation Games and Gamestorming.

"Playcamps are for anyone with an interest in learning how collaborative play can help individuals and teams collaborate, prioritize and communicate more effectively."

Luke Hohmann will be a keynote speaker. More information and registration can be found here: http://www.playcamp.net/vienna-austria.html

Innovation Games Workshop with Luke Hohman
Saturday, September 19th, 2015, 9.30 am to 5 pm

Luke Hohmann will moderate a one-day workshop about "Innovation Games: Designing for Multidimensional Collaboration" (Certification Course) at the TechTalk Office.
More Information is available on the TechTalk Website.

Barcamp.Digital
Friday to  Sunday, September 11th - 13th

And finally a short-term announcement ... if you have some spare time in Vienna this weekend (September 11th to 13th) - the Barcamp.digital is going on at the Microsoft Office - including the UXcamp - maybe you want to join. This event is free of charge.
More Information is available on the Barcamp.Digital Website.

Have a nice Weekend. Regards, Claudia

User Experience Conference in Vienna @ linuxwochen

Hi,

I want to announce a great UX track at the linux weeks in Vienna next Saturday - May 4th, 2013.

In the morning I will do a workshop session with paper prototyping and usability testing. If you have an app idea or want to try out these techniques, you are very welcome.


More information regarding the UX sessions can be found on the User Experience Konferenz-Website (german).

Hope to see you there,
Claudia

PS: Of course free entry at all workshops and sessions.

Windows 8 App-a-thon in Vienna

Hi,

next weekend - August 25th and 26th - already the 2nd Windows 8 App-a-thon in Vienna will take place.

In the morning I will present 6 easy-to-use UX tools in 60 minutes, covering Interview Techniques, Personas, Wireframing, Paper Prototyping, Think aloud testing and heuristic evaluation.

Looking forward to see you there - free admission, but registration is necessary.
More information and registration you can find on the Microsoft website.

Br, Claudia 

Usability-to-go Workshop: find & fix usability problems

Hi,

together with my colleague Stefan I will run again an one-day workshop in Vienna and Zurich called "Usability-to-Go: Find & fix usability problems".

The workshop is for non-UX-Experts - developers, product owners, project managers, etc. - and will be a hands-on workshop.

The content will be:

• Heuristic evaluation (Usability Review)
• Design Patterns and Best Practices
• Collaborative Design
• Prototyping
• Usability Testing with end users (Think Aloud)

The dates are the 15th of May in Zurich (Switzerland) and the 24th of May in Vienna (Austria).

More information about the workshop can be found on the TechTalk website.

Br, Claudia

World Usability Day: UXcamp Vienna 2011

Hi,

on the 10th of November is the World Usability Day. The Interactiondesign Stammtisch in Vienna is organizing a Barcamp two days later on the 12th of November 2011.

I think most of you know that for a Barcamp it's important that everybody is participating. Of course the participation is free of charge.

Where and When?
Samstag, 12. November 2011 von 9 Uhr bis 18 Uhr
A1 Telekom Austria, Lassallestraße 9 (nähe Praterstern), 1020 Wien

More information:
http://www.barcamp.at/UXcamp_2011

A few of the sessions will be held in english - see more info about that in the "geplante Sessions" section.

Would be happy to see you there.

Br, Claudia

EVENT: Usability-to-Go für Entwickler: 1x1 Kompaktwissen

Hi,

together with my colleague Stefan I will run a one-day workshop in Vienna and Zurich called "Usability-to-Go für Entwickler: 1x1 Kompaktwissen"
(It's planned to be in german, but we can handle english speaking participants too :-) ).

So the workshop is for developers and will be a hands-on workshop.

The content will be:

• What is user-centered design?
• Personas (representatives for the end-user)
• Wireframes and Sketching to communicate and discuss requirements
• Usability Testing
• What methods are usefull depending on the project environment?

The dates are the 25th of October in Vienna (Austria) and the 3rd of November in Zurich (Switzerland).

More information about the workshop can be found on the TechTalk website.

Br, Claudia

UXcamp - Day 1 Impressions

Further pics of day 1 you can find on Fluidr.

UXcamp - Agile & UX: How to make it work

Hi,

last weekend I attended an really great UXcamp Europe in Berlin. At the first day I did one session together with Anders Ramsay. The results of the discussion are collected in this presentation....

Agile & UX: How to make it work

In the next days I will share with you the rest of my notes and experiences from the UXcamp.

Br, Claudia

UX Events in Europe & why don't usability problems get fixed?

Hi,

today I want to share two user experience events in Europe you might be interested in.

One - I'm not sure if I will attend - is the UX LX in May - an User Experience Event in Lisbon with a lot of interesting speakers and workshops.

The 2nd event is the UXcamp Europe on the 11th and 12th of June in Berlin. I will be there and if you too perhaps we can get in contact...

And now a link that may be interesting for you.

Why don't usability problems get fixed?
UX matters, Jim Ross - February 7, 2011
The usability test is done, you worked on good solutions for the usability problems and presented them to the team.... A few weeks later only a few of your recommendations are implemented - what's wrong?
Jim Ross collected reasons and limitations and also provides some ideas how this problem can be solved.

Have a nice weekend,
Claudia

Web Findings ...

Hi everybody,

today I want to share with you some of the links I found in the last weeks - some of them you probably know because I already posted them in twitter.

A program to simulate colorblindness for Windows, Mac and Linux (in the image below you see the TechTalk-Website with a deuteranopia colorblindness) -> Color Oracle

The first world usability day event in Vienna on 12th of november 2009 -> http://www.worldusabilityday.org/wud09vienna

A nice example that shows the development of a very rough draft to a elaborated wireframe. -> Uwe Thimel's Portfolio on BehanceNetwork

And the last link I want to share is about Personas and how they can be represented ... a lot of different examples -> Fluidproject.org

Br, Claudia

PS: ReMix in Vienna on the 1st of october 2009 > Microsoft

PPS: TechTalk is looking for an creative user interface designer > TechTalk (german text) (or contact me)

Paper Prototyping @ Usability Week

Hi,

last week I visited the Usability week 2009 in London and today I want to share with you my experience regarding paper prototyping.

On the last day we should work in groups to create a paper prototype in about 1 hour and then test this prototype with a person from another group. I have to say it was really fun and it worked really well. Especially we recognized how easy and FAST a design can be tested and improvements can be found.

In the following pictures you can see fast and creative work :-)

The topic of the paper prototype was part of a shop application where the user has the possibility to create a customized duvet.

In the following short video you can see the start of the test session and our favourite sentence "We are not testing you, we are testing the application".

Hopefully in the next days I have time to add more interesting topics related to the Usability Week.

Br, Claudia

Event - Kundenfrühstück bei TechTalk

Hi,

today in german:

Kundenfrühstück bei TechTalk am 23.4.2009 um 9:00 zum Thema:

"Usability meets Development"
Wie schafft man es den Spagat zwischen Development und Usability optimal zu spannen?
Erfahren Sie auch, wie die Qualität/Userexperience von Applikationen für den Endanwender durch die Zusammenarbeit von Programmierung und Design verbessert werden kann.

Ich würde mich freuen wenn möglichst viele Interessierte dabei wären.

Br, Claudia