CHI 2008 Recap

Joan DiMicco,
Beth Loring,
Jen McGinn,
Lisa Neal &
Chauncey Wilson

Tuesday, May 13, 2008 - 6:30 PM
Sun Microsystems, Burlington, MA

Abstract:

Members of BostonCHI who attended the international CHI 2008 conference in Florence, Italy in April will share with us some of their experiences, photos, stories & favorite papers. The theme of this year's conference was "art.science.balance".

Presenters:

Joan DiMicco is a Research Scientist at IBM’s T. J. Watson Research Center, in Cambridge, MA. Her career focus is on the intersection of design, engineering, and organizational behavior. Her research aim is to create software tools that increase our understanding of the impact of technology on human relationships. She holds a BS in Applied Mathematics from Brown University and a PhD from the MIT Media Lab. Prior to working at IBM, she worked at Sun Microsystems, First Virtual Holdings, and Open Sesame. Joan blogs about design, technology, and collaboration at JoanDiMicco.com/blog.

Beth Loring is Director of the Design and Usability Center at Bentley College, and has over 20 years of experience in product design and usability. She has expertise in user requirements gathering, UI design, and usability evaluation methods. She has designed and evaluated a wide array of consumer products, web sites, desktop software, business applications, and medical devices. Beth has been a faculty member in Bentley's Information Design Certificate program since 2001. Before joining Bentley in 2003, Beth was a Principal Research Scientist at the American Institutes for Research, and before that she spent five years as the human factors team leader at IDEO Product Development in Boston. She is knowledgeable about FDA and AAMI human factors standards for medical products, as well as ADA Section 508 accessibility compliance.

Beth holds an MS in Engineering Design from Tufts University and is a Certified Human Factors Professional. She has published numerous papers on usability and is co-author of "Moderating Usability Tests: Principles and Practices for Interacting" with Joe Dumas (Morgan Kaufmann, 2008). Beth is past chair of both the New England Chapter of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society and BostonCHI.

Jen McGinn is a Senior User Experience Engineer in the Software Experience Design (xDesign) group at Sun Microsystems, in Burlington, MA. She has written branded interaction guidelines for installation, developed personas for Sun Learning Services, and simplified the user experience with the Java Enterprise System. Jen has worked for Sun for over 12 years in user experience, technical training, and technical writing. Before joining Sun, Jen led other lives as a software developer and system administration consultant. She holds a BS in Information Systems from UMBC and an MS in Human Factors in Information Design from Bentley.

Lisa Neal is Editor-in-Chief of eLearn Magazine and Adjunct Clinical Professor at Tufts University School of Medicine where she teaches a course on Online Consumer Health. Lisa holds a Ph.D. in Computer Science from Harvard University. Lisa blogs about health and education at LisaNeal.com.

Chauncey Wilson is on the faculty of the Information Design program at Bentley College, and has spent more than 20 years as an engineering psychologist, user interface designer, usability engineer, and product development manager. His academic background includes a physics degree and graduate training in social psychology, human factors engineering, and statistics. His consulting clients have included Microsoft, FEDEX, Lotus, Reuters, and 3COM. He is past president of the Northern New England chapter of the Society for Technical Communication (STC) and the STC Usability SIG, and member of the Usability Professionals' Association, the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society, and the ACM SIGCHI. He co-wrote The Usability Engineering Framework for Product Design and Evaluation in the handbook of HCI and has presented on the psychology of victimization, research ethics, cyberlaw, usability methods, web design, and documentation usability.

Chauncey is also the co-chair of the Usability and User Experience track for CHI 2009 in Boston.