DesignCampWaterloo on November 8

November 8 is World Usability Day. If you’d like to participate locally, look no further than DesignCampWaterloo on the UW campus from 2:00 to 7:00 pm. Details follow.

What is DesignCampWaterloo?

DesignCampWaterloo is an informal, open-forum opportunity for student, professional and academic enthusiasts to gather, talk, and show off their work to like-minded folks. If you’ve got digital designs – web, interface, or graphic – we want to see ‘em. If you don’t, we still want to see you! Being an open forum event, DesignCamp is as much about the audience as it is about the presenters.

This year, DesignCamp is proud to be hosted by World Usability Day 2007 and to welcome WIHIR as our Design Challenge presenters.

DesignCamp is a great opportunity to show off innovative work, get feedback from the audience, and connect with fellow designers. Plus, it’s a great chance for students to meet potential employers from some of Waterloo’s best companies.

When is DesignCampWaterloo?

Thursday, November 8, 2007
2:00 pm – 7:00 pm
University of Waterloo
Student Life Centre

How much does DesignCampWaterloo cost?

Nothing! DesignCampWaterloo is free and open to everyone who is interested. (Really! Everyone!)

8th Annual Human Factors Inter-University Workshop

The region’s hopping these days with UX-related events. Aside from our own monthly events, there’s Design Camp Waterloo on November 8 (planned nicely to coordinate with World Usability Day) and now the Human Factors Inter-University Workshop at UW. Here are the details as provided by Jennifer Jeon of the Advanced Interface Design Lab (AIDL).

Description

We would like to invite you to join us at the 8th Annual Human Factors Inter-University Workshop hosted by the University of Waterloo. This workshop is an informative yet informal event held yearly, bringing students and researchers together from local area institutions to share research progress and ideas in human factors engineering.

Date and location

November 17, 2007
9:30 am to 5:30 pm
Centre for Environmental and Information Technologies
EIT Room 1105
University of Waterloo

Registration

Registration for this full-day workshop is free! You just need to register by sending an email to iuw2007waterloo@gmail.com with your name and affiliation by October 12, 2007.

Sponsorship

Sponsorship opportunities are available. Please contact us by email if your company is interested in sponsoring this event.

December 2007: Roger Martin on "Design Thinking: The Next Competitive Advantage"

December 20, 20075:00 to 6:30 pmAccelerator Centre295 Hagey Blvd., Waterloo[Map]Everyone is invited to this free event. If you plan to attend, please RSVP to Wanda Eby at Communitech so we can gauge attendance and plan for an appropriate room at the Accelerator Centre. We’re thrilled to announce that Roger Martin will pay us a visit on December 20. Roger is Dean of the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto and a renowned speaker on the application of “design thinking” to business strategy. For a taste of his ideas and contributions to the field, dig out your back issues of Harvard Business Review, download this PDF of Roger’s article in Fast Company, or browse the results when you search for him on BusinessWeek.

Design Thinking: The Next Competitive Advantage

Two fundamental kinds of thinking co-exist and often collide in business organizations: analytical thinking and design thinking. Both have their places, but as organizations grow, analytical thinking — which focuses on exploitation and refinement of the current state of knowledge — often crowds out design thinking, which pushes knowledge forward and creates new possibilities. To benefit from design thinking, a business needs to understand how analytical thinking and design thinking differ, why and how they come into conflict, and how to create an environment which encourages design thinking to flourish.

May 2008: User Experience Design at Microsoft (rescheduled from Nov/07 and Feb/08 – whew!)

November 22, 2007
February 21, 2008
Delayed until May 2008 as we’re likely co-hosting an event with Microsoft
5:00 to 6:30 pm
Accelerator Centre
295 Hagey Blvd., Waterloo
[Map]

On November 22 February 21 Whew, okay, sometime in May we welcome Qixing Zeng from Microsoft Canada. Qixing is a User Experience Evangelist with Microsoft, so she’s well-placed to give us the dirt on how Microsoft is thinking about UX these days — and how that might affect the work we do as well. We’ll nail down the exact topic of Qixing’s talk as the date approaches, but in the meantime here’s a general introduction from her.

User Experience Design at Microsoft

How is Microsoft changing its culture from engineering-driven to Experience First? What is the design model at Microsoft? Microsoft software now spans from standard websites to rich interactive applications to desktop applications, and we interact with it on our TVs, phones, table tops, game consoles, and computers. How does Microsoft strive to create a seamless user experience across all these platforms — while enabling designers and developers to work more productively together? In my talk, I’ll share some insights and examples to answer these questions from my perspective as a UX evangelist within Microsoft. I’ll illustrate these ideas through real world design examples created on the Microsoft Silverlight and Windows Presentation Foundation platform.

If there’s a specific Microsoft UX topic you’d like to hear about, please feel free to contact me through my blog. I look forward to meeting you all in November!

In the meantime, here are some useful links:

• Microsoft Design
• Silverlight
• Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF)
• Expression Studio

(October 2007) Designing the User Experience: Unplugged

October 18, 2007
5:00 to 6:30 pm
Accelerator Centre
Meeting room #2
295 Hagey Blvd., Waterloo
[Map]

Event description

Designing the user experience for software requires understanding user needs and behaviors. However, only so much can be learned by asking direct questions of people. Designers can employ a variety of techniques and activities to quickly uncover user needs and influence their understanding of the functionality required — and of potential design solutions. Come participate in an informal, “unplugged” discussion in which we’ll collectively formulate a best-of-breed process for designing user experiences.

About the speaker

Sandra Loop brings experience as a UX designer for the Sybase iAnywhere Professional Services group. Sandra will facilitate the discussion using a real-world mobile application scenario.

September 2007: "UX ChitChat"

September 20, 2007
5:00 to 6:30 pm
Accelerator Centre
Meeting room #2
295 Hagey Blvd., Waterloo
[Map]
UPDATE: Location confirmed, we’re at the Accelerator Centre as originally planned.

Join us on September 20 for ninety minutes of fascinating, illuminating, edge-of-your-seat… chitchat. Okay, perhaps we’re over-promising somewhat here, but with your help we could kick off the season with an energetic bang. Navid and Robert will discuss plans for upcoming events and facilitate conversations on whatever topics are of interest to the folks who attend. From the variety of people who participated last spring, we know there’ll be no shortage of things to talk about; so instead of listening to a speaker tackle a single topic in depth, you’ll get a chance to spark conversations and hear what others have to say. Wrestling with a problem and want some ideas? Read something interesting and like to share? Come on out for some quality ChitChat.

Give us a taste of what you’d like to ChitChat about!

With some advance notice, we can pull together some supporting materials. So if there’s a topic that interests you, simply add a comment to this blog posting. That lets others see what you’ve suggested and voice their support too. Here are some examples of topics, to get you thinking:

• What’s up with people going crazy over Apple’s iPhone?
• I’ve been hearing about Design Patterns. Anybody using them?
• Tips for creating interactive prototypes
• Connecting design objectives with business goals

Please toss your ideas into the comments for this post. Thanks! Hope to see you on the 20th!

Let us know about topics or speakers you're interested in

Have any specific topics you’d like covered at one of our events? Know anyone you’d like to see make a presentation? Interested in presenting something yourself?

We’d love to know your thoughts on this. Feel free to leave a comment on this blog posting so everyone else can chime in with their responses too. Or, if you prefer a more private channel, fire an email to our coordinators Robert and Navid.