I haven’t even been in Cambridge for a week and already I’m leaving again. I’ll be in San Francisco and other Bay Area locales for the next week, meeting new and old friends as well as attending the DUX conference.
I won’t be blogging the conference, but I will have my Hiptop/Sidekick, so drop me an email (in the sidebar to your right) or AIM (cthornton251) if you want to make plans to meet up.
Just stumbled across UsabilityNet. Not a bad little overview of usability, with a nice table of methods (though their typography could use some work). Similar to Usability.gov, but from the EU.
“Designers learn about aesthetics. They seldom learn about human psychology…. Humans are fallible. Learn that. Cherish that…. Design for people as they are, not as you would have them be. Design for inefficient users. Design for creative, imaginative people who will do things with your design that you never have dreamed of, things both good and horrid. Design for people who are tired and stressed, cranky and irritable, sloppy and inattentive. In other words, design for real people.”
A nice quote from Don Norman, pulled from the review of Citizen Designer: Perspectives on Design Responsibility at Social Design Notes, passed along by Anne.
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The New Interfaces for Musical Expression conference was wonderful. So was Montreal. I’ll post more in a few days, but for now, you can check out the online proceedings. It’s so wonderful when proceedings are publicly available…
Completely unrelated: I just saw five huskies walking down the sidewalk, single-file, with their owner bringing up the rear. A slo-mo Iditarod of the suburban sort.
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School is over, I’m submitting my thesis paper and project proposals today, and I’ll be leaving Pittsburgh tomorrow. This summer I’ll be in Boston in the Collaborative User Experience Research Group at IBM, doing stuff related to people communicating using computers.
I’ll also be going to several conferences.
May 21-24: New Interfaces for Musical Expression in Montreal.
May 31 - June 8: Designing for User Experiences (DUX) in San Francisco.
July 6-9: International Community for Auditory Display in Boston, where I’ll be presenting Audiocentric Interface Design: A Building Blocks Approach [pdf].
Drop me a note if we’re going to be in the same place at the same time.
Some solid, straightforward advice from Scott Berkun at Microsoft about landing a position in any of the user-experience related positions. Many of the graduating second-year interaction design students as well as the HCI students are currently out looking around. Best of luck to them - some friends have already landed great positions, and I have no doubt that others will do the same.
On a semi-related note, I was visiting Microsoft Research a few weeks ago and went out one night with a group from Office. What they used to call a Usability Specialist or Usability Engineer they now call a Design Researcher, to better reflect the breadth of what they do. As an outsider, I was impressed by the rapport between the Interaction Designers and Design Researchers on the team - something you generally expect but don’t always see.
The first one is a bit belated: this site passed the two-year mark a few days ago. Thanks to everyone who stops by, and especially to all of you wonderful friends I’ve made through this weblog.
The second birthday is my own. Cinco de Mayo, spanish for “Chad’s Birthday”. Thanks, Mom and Dad.
Now, if you’ll indulge me, here’s a song about feeling older. It’s from a band I used to play in when I was a bit younger.
Because videos often get the point across much faster.
CHI Video Retrospective
U of Maryland HCIL Open House Videos
From HCI Index
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