Category Archives: Monthly Meetings

Boston Interactions, Monthly Meetings

Beyond the UX Tipping Point

Joint meeting between IEEE Computer Society, GBC/ACM and BostonCHI

  • Jared M. Spool, Founding Principal, User Interface Engineering
  • Thursday, January 21, 2016 at 6:30 PM
  • At Verizon Labs, 60 Sylvan Rd, Waltham, MA

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Abstract

For the longest time, making a great experience for the user was a luxury item in a business’s strategy. It was a nice-to-have, after identifying a customer need and fulfilling it with a working product. The product had to work and it had to ship. If it was a great experience, well all the better. Times have changed. The cost of creating and delivering a product is no longer a barrier to entry. Quality is no longer a differentiator. What’s left? The experience of using the product. If you’re going to be truly competitive in today’s markets, your products and services better have a great experience. To do that, a fundamental shift has to occur inside your organization. It’s no longer acceptable to ship a product with a poor experience or to deliver poor customer service. Every part of the organization has to be infused with an understanding of great user experience. Your organization has to cross the UX Tipping Point.

Bio

Jared M. Spool is the founder of User Interface Engineering and a co-founder of Center Centre. If you’ve ever seen Jared speak about user experience design, you know that he’s probably the most effective and knowledgeable communicator on the subject today. He’s been working in the field of usability and experience design since 1978, before the term “usability” was ever associated with computers.

Jared spends his time working with the research teams at User Interface Engineering, helps clients understand how to solve their design problems, explains to reporters and industry analysts what the current state of design is all about, and is a top-rated speaker at more than 20 conferences every year. With Dr. Leslie Jensen-Inman, he is starting Center Centre, a new school in Chattanooga, TN to create the next generation of industry-ready UX Designers. In 2014, the school, under the nickname of the Unicorn Institute, launched a Kickstarter project that successfully raised more that 600% of its initial goal. He is also the conference chair and keynote speaker at the annual UI Conference and UX Immersion Conference, and manages to squeeze in a fair amount of writing time. He is author of the book, Web Usability: A Designer’s Guide and co-author of Web Anatomy: Interaction Design Frameworks that Work. You can find his writing at uie.com and follow his adventures on the twitters at @jmspool.

Evening Schedule

6:30 – 7:00 Networking
7:00 – 8:30 Meeting
8:30 – 9:00 CHI Dessert and more networking!

Sponsors

Vitamin T is sponsoring pizza and dessert.

Getting to the Event

Verizon Labs, 60 Sylvan Rd, Waltham, MA

Monthly Meetings

Design is More Than Lipstick on a Pig

  • Traci Lepore, Principal User Experience Designer, Oracle
  • Tuesday, December 8, 2015 at 6:30pm
  • At IBM Research Cambridge, 1 Rogers Street, Cambridge, MA

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Abstract

When done well, Design is a fusion of art, science, and technology that builds on visual theories, psychology, sociology, and marketing. This is especially true for User Experience Design. To successfully create and communicate that fusion we need a deeper understanding of the multiple disciplines that actually impact our work and process in order to articulate the reasoning behind our visions and communicate the importance and clarity of the whole Design.

In my other life, theater, a piece of work is called a production. Quite fitting, as there are multiple design aspects from the stage and set design, to costumes, to technical design and lighting design that have to come together to create the experience. And there isn’t one deliverable, but there is one central aspect of the design and that is the script. The script provides the cues for the set, the lighting, the sound, and the costumes. They all have their own means of communication but still work with that core structure.

So why don’t we consider a UX Design a production? There are just as many aspects that must come together to complete the work. I want to explore how we can communicate the “Production of User Experience Design” with its core functional design, its technical design, its visual design, and its strategic design as a whole cohesive view.  If we can learn how to do this successfully, we can show how UX Design is so much more than lipstick on a pig.

Bio

With almost fifteen years of experience as an interaction designer and user researcher, with a focus on user-centered design methods, Traci has experienced a broad range of work practices. At Oracle, Traci is responsible for helping to define the customer experience for a new Cloud Commerce Product. While working as a consultant for almost ten years, she worked on both enterprise and consumer projects across a variety of industries and domains. Through her UXmatters column, Dramatic Impact, Traci hopes to infuse aspects of theatrical theory and practice into her design practice and bring a more empathetic and user-centered focus to her work. Traci holds an M.A. in Theater Education from Emerson and a B.S. in Communications Media from Fitchburg State College.

Evening Schedule

6:30 – 7:00 Networking over pizza and beverages
7:00 – 8:30 Meeting
8:30 – 9:00 CHI Dessert and more networking!

Monthly Sponsors

Thank you to our generous sponsors. Interested in sponsoring BostonCHI? Let us know!

IBM Research Cambridge is hosting us and providing pizza.

Vitamin T is sponsoring dessert.

Getting to the event

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IBM Research Cambridge
1 Rogers Street
Cambridge, MA