–Engage

I haven’t been around for awhile, traveling from Tel Aviv, Israel to Monterey, CA, for business and for fun, so I thought I’d share a bit of where I’ve been and also take this opportunity to tell people what I’ll be up to the rest of this quarter.

For the post holiday season I went to Israel to be with my family. They got to meet my new baby boy and I got to meet my newest niece. The whole family congregated and fun was had by all.

During my time in Israel, I gave a presentation to the wonderful people at UPA Israel. The event page has links to audio (I think) and to a PDF version of my presentation, and pictures of me and others at the event. I felt warmly welcomed by the large group of 200 or so User Experience practitioners from all over Israel. Thank you Uzi and Tomer for setting this up. Their meetings are a model of organization.

After coming back state-side, I had a week before going back on the road again. During that time, Kip Voytek, gave a great presentation on the importance of aesthetics in Interaction Design. I hope to have a review and to be able to post this presentation to this blog soon. Check back. In short, Kip demonstrated how interactions play a tremendous role in creating moments of delight that can directly impact the success or failure of a marketing campaign, online store, or application software. Go for the smirks!

Well then I was off to the Web Application Summit by UIE. I don’t think that anyone curates an event as well as Jared Spool and his merry gang. If you ever have an opportunity to go to one of UIE’s events (next one is probably in October) I really recommend it. Speakers like Larry Constantine, Luke Wroblewski, Hagan Rivers, and many more spoke about the foundations of Web Application Design and companies like eBay, NetFlix, H&R Block and many more presented on the special aspects of their web applications in great case studies.

At the Web App Summit Bill Scott and I gave our 1-day workshop, which we gave at UI11 called, Designing Powerful Web Applications using AJAX and RIAs. Bill and I were even better together than I first time out (see upcoming events later on) having learned a lot of lessons. My favorite part was the improved improv sketching exercise.

Then for my short talk I repeated my “What is ‘rich’? Why do ‘rich’?” talk that I gave at UI11 and in Israel. What I like about this talk is that it really helps people talk with their peers about why richer interactions matter to the overall experience, including important usability issues such as learnability, credibility, complexity management. You can find an abstract of the talk here. (Just look down the page a bit.) A link to the presentation itself is available from the Israel referenced link above.

Now, I’m back to work and preparing for speaking engagements (more of the same stuff) in NYC and Las Vegas.

IN February, I’ll be speaking at the monthly IxDA NYC event. No details are available yet, but subscribe to the IxDA Discussion or Announcement lists and be sure to hear about it. You can also send a message to nyc (at) ixda (dot) org to learn about NYC only events. I am torn about what I should do in February, so maybe you could help me decide.

Would you like a theory talk about RIAs, and why their aesthetics and modes of operation improve the overall user experience of web-based applications?

Would you prefer a hands on short workshop on how to design rich internet applications? (This would be a substantially truncated version of the workshop that Bill and I do for UIE.) If so, would you be willing to pay for such a workshop given that others will pay upwards of $500+ to experience the entire thing elsewhere? If so, how much (all proceeds would go to IxDA NYC and Global IxDA)?

(Leave your answers in the comments below.)

In March, I’ll be doing a 1/2 day version with Bill Scott of our Designing RIAs workshop on behalf of IxDA (all proceeds go to the Interaction Design Association). You can already register for the IA Summit where we will be giving the 1/2 day workshop as a pre-conference event. We are altering the core of the workshop to focus on issues of Interaction Design, and using the design of RIAs as the basis for practicing and discussing IxD. Bill and I are very excited about this opportunity and we expect it to be a fun and educational morning for everyone who comes.

Topics I hope to write on soon on this blog include:

• More thoughts on sketching: Lessons learned from my RIA Design class.
• Patterns applied to use behavior, instead of to solutions.
• Review of Kip Voytek’s presentation to IxDA NYC.
• Planning an IxD(A) conference in the future.

And whatever else hits my head!

Tog talks about iPhone … neat and lengthy article.