Gerry McGovern
Gerry McGovern
Gerry is the founder and CEO of Customer Carewords. He is widely regarded as the worldwide authority on increasing web satisfaction by managing and consulting extensively on web content management issues since 1994. His latest book, The Stranger's Long Neck: How to Deliver What Your Customers Really Want Online, was published in 2010 by A & C Black.
In 2006, The Irish Times described him as one of five visionaries who had had a major impact on the development of the Web. (The other four were Tim O'Reilly, Vint Cerf, Tim Berners-Lee, and Nicholas Negroponte). In 2006, he received the Educational Contribution award from the Irish Internet Association.
Gerry has written four books. In 1999, Gerry published The Caring Economy (Blackhall Publishing), which was voted 25th out of the top 50 new economy books by Middleton/Capstone. In 2001, he published two books with Financial Times Prentice Hall, entitled: Content Critical and The Web Content Style Guide. Design Research News stated that Content Critical "should be on the reading list of every course in Web design". Knowledge Management Review described it as a "bible" of content management.
In 2006, he published Killer Web Content (Bloomsbury / A&C Black). Suzanne Sowinska, Manager, Content Publishing Excellence, Microsoft Corporation described it as "essential reading". Bev Godwin, Director, FirstGov.gov: The U.S. Government's Official Web Portal, said about the book: "Genius! Gerry McGovern gets it! If you read ONE book on managing a Web site, this is it".
Jeff Gothelf
Jeff Gothelf
Jeff Gothelf has spent a 14 year career as an interaction designer, Agile practitioner, user experience team leader and blogger. He is one of the leading voices on the topic of Agile UX and Lean UX. In addition, Jeff is the author of the upcoming O'Reilly book (2012), Lean UX: Applying lean principles to improve user experience. He is a highly sought-after international speaker having presented at EuroIA, SXSW, IA Summit, Interaction (IxDA), London IA, the Agile conference and Startup Lessons Learned. Jeff has led cross-functional product design teams at TheLadders, Publicis Modem, WebTrends, Fidelity, AOL while maintaining a strong advisory and mentorship presence in the startup communities of New York City and Silicon Valley. Most recently he launched Proof - a lean product innovation studio in NYC.
Jeff Sauro
Jeff Sauro
Jeff is a Six-Sigma trained statistical analyst and pioneer in quantifying the user experience. He specializes in making statistical concepts understandable and actionable. Jeff has published over fifteen peer-reviewed research articles and presents tutorials and papers regularly at the leading Human Computer Interaction conferences: CHI, UPA and HCII and HFES. He has worked for Oracle, PeopleSoft, Intuit and General Electric.
Jim Lewis
Jim Lewis
Began college studies as music major. Graduated 1975 with BM in music theory and composition, 1978 with MM in music composition. Switched to experimental psychology, graduating with BA in 1978 and MA (engineering psychology) in 1982 (all degrees from New Mexico State University). Began work at IBM in 1981 as human factors engineer, primary focus on input methods (keyboards, mice, touchscreens, joysticks). Started work on speech input/output in early 1990s. Graduated with PhD in experimental psychology (psycholinguistics) in 1996 (from Florida Atlantic University). In addition to scholarly publications, has over 50 patents issued by the US Patent Office -- designated an IBM Master Inventor in 2003.
Bill Albert
Bill Albert
William (Bill) Albert is the Director of the Design and Usability Center at Bentley University. Previously he was Director of User Experience at Fidelity Investments for six years. Prior to joining Fidelity, he was a Senior User Interface Researcher at Lycos and Post Doctoral Research Scientist at Cambridge Basic Research. Over the past decade, Bill has used nearly every type of usability metric as part of his research. He has published more than 20 papers and has presented his research at many professional and academic conferences. Albert has been awarded prestigious fellowships through the University of California and the Japanese government for his research in human factors and spatial cognition. He received B.A. and M.A. degrees from the University of Washington and a Ph.D. from Boston University.
Sabrina Mach
Sabrina Mach
Sabrina Mach, co-founder of Webnographer has a background in market research, design and human computer interaction. She is passionate about making web evaluations easier, more effective and measurable. Sabrina has extensive experience in remote usability, having carried out studies for some of Europe’s largest telecoms companies, broadcasters, and travel sites. The studies have used methods ranging from remote ethnography, critical incident reporting, to asynchronous remote testing. She has researched participant behaviour and tested websites in over 150 countries. Her MSc dissertation at University College London compared the benefits and trade-offs between conventional lab testing and un-moderated remote usability testing.
James Page
James Page
James started off as a programmer, but soon realised that, to see what he has created was becoming a reality, he would have to be entrepreneur as well. James has been involved in a number of start ups, including Eidos (who went on to launch Tomb Raider), and Deckchair.com with Bob Geldof. He is passionate about making software less frustrating and easier to use.
Tomer Sharon
Tomer Sharon
A user experience researcher at Google New York since 2008, Tomer is currently doing user research for Google Search. Previously, he led the UX research effort for Google’s online advertising management platform, DFP (Doubleclick for Publishers). Prior to working for Google, he was a user researcher at Check Point Software Technologies in Israel, where he led the research effort for dozens of networking and Internet security products on various platforms. As founder and president of UPA Israel, Tomer led the chapter to many achievements, including raising awareness of the need for easy-to-use, efficient, and fun technology products, as well as growing and nurturing a professional community of 1,000 practitioners. He speaks at conferences and professional events, is a published author of articles and papers, and a past editorial board member for UX Magazine. Tomer is the author of the forthcoming Morgan Kaufmann book, It’s Our Research: Getting Stakeholder Buy-in for User Experience Research Projects, which will be out in 2012. He holds a master’s degree in human factors in information design from Bentley University.
Julia Houck-Whitaker
Julia Houck-Whitaker
As the Director of Customer Insight at EffectiveUI, Julia leads the customer insight team and identifies the best ways to uncover key insights to inform design and development of digital products. With an arsenal of experience and methods, from remote usability testing to contextual inquiry, she helps discover simple solutions that have a big impact for users and businesses. She also facilitates data synthesis and client collaboration for a cohesive process of co-creation.
Julia is passionate about how customer insight can effectively inform design, address clients’ key goals and bring the customer to life.
Prior to EffectiveUI, Julia was the Research and Development Manager at Adaptive Path where she oversaw projects including a user-centered glucose pump and monitor for people with diabetes. She was also Director of User Experience at Bolt Peters, where she led research projects focused on increasing online conversion for her client's.
Alfonso de la Nuez
Alfonso de la Nuez
Alfonso leads UserZoom´s Sales worldwide. He has 14-years experience in the field of Online Marketing, Web Design and User Experience, having worked for companies such as Dell Computers, Icon Medialab (now LBi) and Proxicom’s venture in Spain (nowIndra). He also co-founded Xperience Consulting, one of Europe’s most experienced usability consultancies.
Jon Innes
Jon Innes
As a UX consultant, Jon helps companies set up and improve their user-centered design and research processes. Jon has led UX projects for several Fortune 1000 companies—both as a consultant and as a member of in-house teams. His experience spans a wide variety of domains, including consumer and enterprise software, consumer hardware, IT projects, and ecommerce Web site design. Jon is a Certified Scrum Product Owner, with extensive experience integrating Agile and user experience for both large, globally distributed teams and early-stage startups. Before becoming a consultant, Jon was Director of User Experience for the Quicken Division at Intuit. In that role, he helped the company launch new products for the health care and online banking markets. Previously, Jon was the first Innovation Architect at SAP, where he helped the company build a team in California. Jon has held management and leadership positions at Vitria Technologies and Siebel Systems and has held UX roles at Cisco, Oracle, Symantec, and IBM.
Darrel Benatar
Darrell Benatar
Darrell Benatar is CEO of UserTesting.com, the largest video usability testing service in the world. Darrell was previously CEO of Surprise.com which was named one of "Time Magazine's 50 Best Sites". Prior to Surprise.com, Darrell produced computer-based learning applications including Make Your Case, a video-based mock trial game which is used in over 100,000 schools to teach students about jury trials. After graduating from Berkeley's Haas School of Business, Darrell ran a family business that distributed office products and furniture.
RJ Owen
RJ Owen
RJ Owen is Design Research Lead at EffectiveUI, focusing on customer insight work including ethnographic research, design validation, co-creation exercises and expert design. In this role, he runs a variety of research methods to gain qualitative insight into a user’s needs and desires, and validates designs by performing user testing. He brainstorms with clients to invent new designs, and works with the interaction design team to actually design the application. RJ also plans the engagement, produces CI deliverables and presents them to clients. RJ started his career as a software developer and spent 10 years working in C++, Java, and Flex before moving to the design research and customer insight team at EffectiveUI. He truly loves good design and understanding what makes people tick. RJ holds an MBA and a bachelor’s in Physics and Computer Science. He is a frequent speaker at industry events such as Web 2.0, SXSW, Adobe MAX and 360|Flex.
Timothy Whalin
Timothy Whalin
With a strong passion for design and user experience, Timothy Whalin has led interactive teams to build products in the education, financial, and TV industries. Since 2001, Timothy has been creating unique solutions to visual design problems that have improved the way users engage and interact on the web. He has directed design projects for over 40 Not for Profits internationally, some of the largest broadcast media companies, and is currently producing new experiences around video consumption on the web. He never stops searching for new opportunities to work with businesses, improving their user experience and product designs. Timothy is leading the user experience at Intelligent Software Solutions and has recently founded Evolve UX, a user experience agency based out of Denver, CO.
Bill Skeet
Bill Skeet
Bill Skeet is a web strategy and UX leader with diverse experience at Fortune 500 companies and start-ups across media and high-tech industries.
He introduced user-centered design and research practices as Chief Designer at Knight Ridder in 1995 and, and continues to advocate customer-centric design methods, at Cisco Systems where his team is responsible for the digital support experience.
Since joining Cisco in 2010, Bill has guided numerous design improvements that have increased efficiency in navigation to product support content, reduced steps for software downloads, and surfaced personalization capabilities that accelerate repetitive tasks.
In 1994, convinced that print media would inevitably transition to screen technology, he created one of the first newspaper web sites. His original framework design was later used at Knight-Ridder to launch more than 20 newspaper websites from 1995-1996.
Bill holds a B.S. in Journalism and an M.S. in Special Studies: Information Design (Cognitive Psychology, Industrial Design and Mass Communications), both from the University of Kansas.
Kim Oslob
Kim Oslob
Kim Oslob has worked in the field of User Experience Research for over 15 years. She has extensive experience with both qualitative and quantitative UX Research through her work at Claris (now Filemaker), Macromedia (now Adobe) and VistoCorp (now Good). Kim has been a presenter at several conferences, including UPA, written an article for the User Experience Magazine, been a guest speaker at the STC-Usability Sig, and an invited speaker for UC Berkeley’s Tech Writers Usability course.
Kim is skilled at developing and managing usability research plans from concept through roll-out. Since joining UserZoom 3 years ago, she’s worked closely with high profile clients to design and implement top notch research, and helped define UserZoom product strategy.
When she’s not helping customers make the most out of UserZoom, you can find her spinning around at the ice rink as early as 5am on Sunday mornings.
Scott Leek
Scott Leek
Scott has more than 28 years of experience helping organizations make significant and measurable improvements. He is the founder and Managing Director of Sigma Consulting Resources.
Scott has consulted and facilitated over 250 design and improvement teams and delivered training to over 10,000 students worldwide in a broad range of topics including Lean Six Sigma, Design for Six Sigma, Balanced Scorecards, Process Management, and Design of Experiments.
In addition to Scott's work with Sigma Consulting and other consulting firms over last 28 years, he also worked as a Product Development Manager for GE Capital and a Master Black Belt for GE Capital, Equity Capital Group. Scott is a contributing author to Rath & Strong’s Six Sigma Leadership Handbook and is a Senior Member of the American Society for Quality (ASQ).
Erin Bradner
Erin Bradner
Erin works for Autodesk, Inc. – the makers of AutoCAD and a world leader in 3D design software for manufacturing, building, engineering, and entertainment. Erin manages user experience research across several of Autodesk's engineering and design products. She actively researches topics ranging from the future of computer-aided design, to how best to integrate marking menus into AutoCAD, to the contribution of user experience to likelihood to recommend a product. Erin has a Ph.D. in Human-Computer Interaction and 15 years of experience using both quantitative and qualitative research methods. Prior to Autodesk, Erin consulted for IBM, Boeing and AT&T.
Michael Summers
Michael Summers
Michael Summers has done UX research of over 50 major international websites, including PNC Bank’s Virtual Wallet, Reuters, Morgan Stanley, PBS, Levis, Starwood Hotels, AVAYA, AstraZeneca, Pfizer, Ralph Lauren Media, Toys R’ Us, Mattel, and Timberland. He has been invited to speak about UXResearch at Internet Retailer, Shop.org, The Conversion Conference, AIGA, CHI, User Friendly, and SXSW. He is co-author of the Houghton-Mifflin textbook “Creating Websites that Work.” He has held senior UX roles at USWeb/CKS, Scient, Nielsen Norman Group, and GSI Commerce.
Trent Mankelow
Trent Mankelow
Trent Mankelow is the co-founder of Optimal Usability, a New Zealand-based design and research consultancy. In late 2004, a banking client hired Optimal Usability to review their information architecture, and the team felt that the existing online tools weren’t up to scratch. They hired a friend to knock together a card sorting tool in a weekend, which they called OptimalSort. Since then the one tool has grown to a suite of three, and more than a million people from around the world have participated in Optimal Workshop (@optimalworkshop) studies to make the world a little bit more findable.
He has a love affair with South America and has visited six times.
Uwe Sander
Uwe Sander
Dr. Uwe Sander is professor of medical information management at the University of Applied Sciences in Hannover, Germany. His widely published research focuses on benchmarking the usability of Physician and Hospital Rating Sites—an increasingly popular and important sources of information for patients.
Charles Wiedenhoft
Charles Wiedenhoft
Charles Wiedenhoft’s influence can be understood, quite simply, through one of his favorite quotes:
“Information consists of differences that make a difference.” – Edward Tufte
In his role as Director of Business Planning and Optimization at marketing agency Red Door Interactive, Charles develops insights that improve the performance of clients’ marketing programs and create better experiences for their customers. He’s also a group manager who oversees the firm’s Experience Design, Analytics & Optimization, Strategic Planning and Business Intelligence practice areas.
Charles’ website usability recommendations have directly resulted in millions of dollars in e-commerce sales for Fortune 500 clients. He is a firm believer in walking in the shoes of his clients’ customers using a genuine, insights-forward user-centered approach. He is driven to make it easier for people to accomplish their goals and to create experiences that surprise and delight for clients such as Cricket Communications, Smith+Noble, Rubio’s Restaurants, Inc. and Petco.
Charles is a sought after source in communications, featured in Mashable, iMedia Connection, Website Magazine and NBC San Diego, in addition to numerous speaking engagements. He’s helped Red Door Interactive itself win several industry and “Workplace Excellence” awards locally and nationally from outlets such as AdAge, Inc. and SHRM.
Kevin Menzie
Kevin Menzie
Kevin is Founder + CEO of Slice of Lime, an 11+ year Boulder-based agency that specializes in marketing websites and user interface design for web apps and mobile apps. Slice of Lime works with a variety of clients ranging from big brands to funded startups both locally and nationally.
Slice of Lime works seamlessly with their clients’ development teams, adopting agile and Lean UX principals. This unique approach has positioned Slice of Lime as a leader in the space for the User Experience Strategy and User Interface Design of successful applications.
While not working at Slice of Lime, Kevin enjoys illustration, mountain biking, writing music, and, most of all, hanging out with his wife and playing make-believe with his two daughters.
Gerry McGovern
Identifying Customers Top Tasks
With Gerry McGovern
Wed, Sep 19 - Full Day
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Learn about a robust method for identifying your customers’ top tasks. Developed over 10 years, it has been used over 400 hundred times in 14 languages by organizations such as Microsoft, Cisco, IBM, Tetra Pak, T-Mobile. The Top Tasks method gives you a league table of your customers’ tasks—from the most important to the least important. This is essential. Most people agree what the overall top tasks are, but then they say: “but my tasks are also important.” We need to be able to show what is important and what is not important.

DETAIL
Lean UX is a critical movement so essential in a world where we must continuously and rapidly adapt. But we can’t continuously improve everything. We must first improve the top tasks—those with the biggest customer demand and impact. Improving top tasks is where most value can be achieved.

Many web / app teams are not focusing on customer top tasks. The reason is that there are far more tiny tasks and when a tiny task goes to sleep at night it dreams of being a top task. So, the tiny tasks are constantly bombarding the team with requests. This method allows you to say no in a definite and clear manner to tiny tasks and it gives you the justification for focusing most effort on your customers’ top tasks.

WHAT YOU WILL LEARN
  1. How to define a customer task. What is a task? What is not a task?
  2. Where to get your initial list of tasks from. The best sources
  3. How to refine your tasks and get to a final task shortlist
  4. How to design a unique voting survey that will give you a league table of your customer tasks
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Jeff Gothelf
LEAN UX: Building a shared understanding to get out of the deliverables business
With Jeff Gothelf
Fri, Sep 21 - 1/2 Day - am
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The days of heavy specifications and documentation are numbered. The new currency of web and software development is shared understanding within nimble, small, dedicated teams. In this workshop, Jeff Gothelf will teach you the collaborative, cross-functional ideals behind Lean UX and demonstrate the power of highly cooperative teams.

DETAIL
Through several hands-on exercises that demonstrate how people work together to build a shared understanding, you will learn to:
  1. Reframe requirements as assumptions
  2. Create experiments to validate those assumptions
  3. Minimize the waste in your UX activities
  4. Collaboratively solve tough design challenges as a team

This workshop is for web designers (interaction, visual, etc) and the product managers and developers who work with them. You’ll take away practical skills to encourage greater team collaboration, rapid design tactics, shorter feedback loops and increased product validity all while increasing team productivity, efficiency and camaraderie.
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Jim Lewis
Usability Testing Fundamentals
With Jim Lewis
Fri, Sep 21 - 1/2 Day - am
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Usability testing is an essential skill for usability practitioners – professionals whose primary goal is to provide guidance to product developers for the purpose of improving the ease-of-use of their products. It is by no means the only skill with which usability practitioners must have proficiency, but it is an important one. A recent survey of experienced usability practitioners indicated that usability testing is a very frequently used method, second only to the use of iterative design. The primary goal of this workshop is to provide an introduction to the practice of usability testing.

Discussion board post assignments for students can be an effective way to engage them in usability testing concepts, allowing them to share insights and learn from each other’s experiences. By participating in these discussion board post assignments for students, learners can deepen their understanding of usability testing through collaborative learning and peer feedback.

DETAIL
This workshop will include discussions on:
    • The concept of usability and the history of usability testing
    • Various goals of usability testing
    • How to run usability tests

Those who would benefit the most from the workshop are:
  • People new to the field of usability testing (beginners or novices, or other practitioners who have not followed recent research in usability science).

There are no materials, knowledge, or equipment requirements for participants.
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Jon Innes
Getting Lean: Practical tips & tricks from the trenches
With Jon Innes
Fri, Sep 21 - 1/2 Day - pm
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In this workshop, we'll explore the concepts behind Agile & Lean, how they differ, and how the "Lean Startup" movement's emphasis on hypothesis testing can help teams be more efficient in exploring ideas for product design. We'll talk about best practices in formulating testable user stories and demonstrate ways you can use metrics like task completion rates, Net Promoter Scores, SUS, and conversion rates while grooming the product backlog and refining designs.

DETAIL
Hands-on exercises will help you learn techniques that you can use to:
  • Write better user stories that are testable and estimable
  • Groom your backlog using personas, themes, & epics
  • Rapidly prototype ideas as a team
  • Define done using test driven design principles
  • Set metrics based design goals

If you're a product owner, designer, researcher, or UX savvy developer with at least a basic level of understanding of UX and Agile who wants to learn how your team can be “more lean” this workshop is for you.
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Tomer Sharon
Getting Buy-in for UX Research
With Tomer Sharon
Fri, Sep 21 - 1/2 Day - am
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One of the biggest challenges and top frustration causes for UX research and usability practitioners lies in getting buy-in for research from stakeholders. People have trouble persuading stakeholders to conduct UX research to begin with. They have difficulties in getting sponsorship and budget for fieldwork. They experience hostility when they try to get their stakeholders to act upon research results. This workshop provides strategies and tools for getting stakeholder buy-in for UX research. During the workshop we will learn tried and tested techniques, hear success and failure stories, practice and role play, and share insights with other workshop attendees.

DETAIL
What do workshop attendees learn?
  1. Improve client skills, learn to deal with difficult stakeholders
  2. Learn communication techniques that have been proven to work with stakeholders
  3. Learn how to encourage stakeholders to act upon research results

Workshop components:
  1. Learn: 12 silver bullets for getting buy-in are introduced
  2. Try: Attendees work in small teams on case studies
  3. Share: teams share their analysis and learn

Please bring either a laptop with a built-in webcam or a smartphone with a video camera or a small camcorder (e.g., a Flip).
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Jeff Sauro and Jim Lewis workshop
Practical Statistics for UX
With Jeff Sauro & Jim Lewis
Wed, Sep 19 - Full Day
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Make better decisions with user research. Is Design A more efficient than Design B? Do more users convert on the new design? Is our Net Promoter Score statistically better than last year? Learn to use and interpret the right statistical tests on small and large sample user-data using just Excel.

DETAIL
From this workshop you will be able to:
    • Compare two interfaces or versions (A/B Testing) by showing statistical significance
    • Clearly understand both the limits and data available from small sample usability data through use of confidence intervals
    • Determine your sample size for comparing two designs, a benchmarking study, survey analysis or finding problems in an interface
    • Determine if a usability test has met or exceeded a goal
    • Get practice knowing what statistical test to perform and how to interpret the results

Who should participate in this workshop?
  • Anyone with an interest in measuring usability or conducting user research with a quantitative focus
  • Participants should be familiar with the process of conducing usability tests as well as basic descriptive statistics such as the mean, median, and standard deviation.
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Scott Leek
Multivariate Testing the User Experience
With Scott Leek
Fri, Sep 21 - 1/2 Day - pm
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Does a blue button convert more users than a green button?
Does, copy, position or color matter in improving the user experience and converting more users?
Multivariate testing allows you to determine which combination of design elements generate the highest conversion rates.

DETAIL
You will learn:
  • How to use Design of Experiments to conduct multivariate Testing
  • How to define a UX problem Scenario
  • How to draw conclusions and take actions from the tests
  • How to understand your options of acting on that problem scenario
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RJ Owen and Julia Houck-Whitaker workshop
Lean Ethnography
With RJ Owen & Julia Houck-Whitaker
Wed, Sep 19 - 1/2 Day - am
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In this half-day workshop we'll give you hands-on instruction in conducting one of the most simple and powerful forms of user research: expert review and guerrilla testing. This technique is the foundation of good design research and valuable for anyone from seasoned designers to business administrators to software developers and everyone in between. We'll spend the first half of our session discussing techniques for performing an expert review of a design – we'll define a heuristic, analyze a design against it, and build a report of our findings. Next we'll teach you how to build a design research plan against those findings and go live into the field to conduct your test. We'll talk about techniques for drafting good questions, performing an interview that garners good insights without biasing the study, and how to approach potential interviewees in a way that's easy and natural. Finally we'll cover how you can mine this data for valuable insights that improve your design and result in better products. This session is a must for anyone who is involved in building software.
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Bill Albert
User Experience Metrics 101
With Bill Albert
Fri, Sep 21 - 1/2 Day - pm
The goal of this workshop is to teach participants how to effectively use a wide variety of user experience (UX) metrics as part of their everyday work. Participants will learn all the common UX metrics, as well as lesser known, but equally effective metrics. Participants will learn the strengths and limitations of each metric, when to use (and not use) each metric, and how to present UX data in a simple yet compelling way.
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Trent Mankelow
Designing an Effective Information Architecture
With Trent Mankelow
Wed. Sep 19 - 1/2 Day - pm
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It’s such a waste when stuff is hard to find. In the book Ambient Findability, Peter Morville quotes a study that estimates that in a medium-sized hospital, 8,000 hours a year of staff time are spent explaining signs and redirecting people. That’s 4 person years!
Finding stuff online is even worse. According to IBM’s chairman, it’s estimated that there will be 44 times as much data and content coming over the next decade, reaching 35 zettabytes by 2020. That’s 35 followed by 21 zeros.
There is one thing you can do to help the madness. You can create an effective information architecture (IA) to connect people with the content that they’re looking for. In this practical workshop you’ll learn how to create an effective IA which will help ensure that your stuff is easy to find and provide your visitors with a great experience. You’ll leave with an armload of practical insights and tips, and with the inspiration to refine and test your own IA

DETAIL
After attending this workshop you will:
  • Understand why information architecture is so important, and why it’s our own fault that we are drowning in information (hint: dopamine)
  • What information architecture is, and what Brad Pitt’s brother and an animated dinosaur has to do with it
  • How to do information architecture the Lean UX way, including how to validate your hypotheses through card sorting and tree testing
  • Have heard real-life stories of what works and what doesn’t work, including surprising insights from mining our database of 1,000,000 participants
  • Have had hands-on experience running a tree test
  • Know many new New Zealand colloquialisms including ‘tuatara’, ‘tramping’, and ‘afternoon tea’

Who should participate in this workshop:
  • People brand new to UX
  • Experienced UX practitioners looking for new ideas
  • Website designers and developers of all stripes
  • Product managers wanting to know more about how information architecture fits into the wider product development lifecycle
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WEDNESDAY   Sep. 19th - 9:00 am to 5:00 pm
Pre Conference Workshops & Tutorials
PRACTICAL STATISTICS FOR USER RESEARCH → Full Day Workshop

Jeff Sauro & Jim Lewis

IDENTIFYING CUSTOMERS TOP TASKS → Full Day Workshop

Gerry McGovern

LEAN ETHNOGRAPHY → Half Day AM Workshop

RJ Owen & Julia Houck-Whitaker

14:00h to 17:00h
DESIGNING AN EFFECTIVE INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE→ Half Day PM Workshop

Trent Mankelow

THURSDAY   Sep. 20th

7:45h to 8:30h → Set Up

8:30h to 9:00h → Gather

9:00h to 9:10h → Capital 1 & 2 → Opening with Jeff Sauro and James Page

9:10h to 9:50h @ Capital 1 & 2
MANAGING THE TASK

Gerry McGovern → 40 min Talk

The culture of launch and leave—management based on projects—is a pre-Web management model that is simply not effective is a highly connected, rapidly changing world. We need a management model around continuous improvement and lean UX because that gives us flexibility and the ability to rapidly adapt and evolve. But how to get it? We must get teams to manage tasks not content or technology. And we must measure outcomes, not inputs.

9:50h to 10:20h @ Capital 1 & 2

Jeff Gothelf → 30 min Talk

10:20h to 10:50h @ Capital 1 & 2
NET PROMOTER AND UX

Erin Bradner → 30 min Talk

:::: Morning Break ::::
11:20h to 11:40h @ Capital 1 & 2
LEAN RESEARCH

Sabrina Mach → 20 min Talk

11:40h to 12:10h @ Capital 1 & 2
TEAMS, MEMES, AND METRICS: CONNECTING THE LEAN UX DOTS…

Jon Innes → 30 min Talk

12:10h to 12:40h @ Capital 1 & 2
WHAT I LEARNED ABOUT UX RESEARCH FROM LEAN STARTUP GURUS

Tomer Sharon → 30 min Talk

I have recently met the top two thought-leaders of the Lean Startup movement, Steve Blank and Eric Ries. We talked about Customer Development, lean entrepreneurship, UX research, and design. In this talk, I will share six insights gained during these conversations, which to my surprise can teach us UX practitioners a lot about our field. The talk will end with six lean recommendations about how we can get better buy-in for UX from the people we work with every day.

:::: Lunch Break (On Your Own) ::::
Afternoon Parallel Sessions
14:00h to 14:30h @ Capital 1 & 2
ESSENTIAL TOOLS TO UNDERSTAND AND IMPROVE THE USER EXPERIENCE

Bill Albert → 30 min Talk

14:00h to 14:30h @ Capital 1 & 2
GETTING LEAN WITH MOBILE

Charles Wiedenhoft → 30 min Talk

Smartphones and tablets now play a leading role in how we access the Internet. Successful design strategies take into consideration unique device interaction styles, context of usage and technical constraints. This presentation will provide tips and best practices on creating mobile-friendly experiences. Attendees will learn how to determine mobile priorities through a lean, data-driven approach.

AREAS OF FOCUS:

  1. Smartphone and tablet trends
  2. Retail innovation through the mobile channel
  3. Determining mobile priorities with analytics
  4. Case study on mobile website optimization
  5. Mini-workshop on setting mobile strategy


14:30h to 15:00h @ Capital 1 & 2
BENCHMARKING THE USER EXPERIENCE

Kim Oslob & Alfonso de la Nuez → 30 min Talk

14:30h to 15:00h @ Capital 3
Eye Spy: How Eyetracking helps you 1) discover UX problems 2) think of solutions, and 3) persuade the THE MAN to actually implement changes

Michael Summers → 30 min Talk

With examples from PayPal, Walmart, PBS, NFL, Mattel, and Levi’s, Michael will demonstrate that although eyetracking (ET) can be a pain, it helps UX pros like no other method can. After this session you’ll realize that the way human visual systems navigate within a single page (or even a scroll), can be more important than how people move between pages. Come see the principles that govern visual discoverability of UI elements on full display in groan-worthy videos. If people don’t see it, they can’t act on it. Research done trackside at a NASCAR race, or in a mall, will challenge your assumptions about what is possible in terms of getting ET out of the lab.

15:00h to 15:30h @ Capital 1 & 2
ALIGNING BUSINESS GOALS WITH USER NEEDS

Timothy Whalin → 30 min Talk

As user experience practitioners, everyday we face the challenge of aligning business goals with user needs. Sometimes these align perfectly, but often one has to be sacrificed for the sake of the other. How do you satisfy both while making the business profitable and producing a beautiful user experience? During this talk, we'll discuss practical ways to make this possible and how to find harmony with the business and user needs.

15:00h to 15:30h @ Capital 3
AVOIDING PROCRASTINATION (THE LEAN UX WAY)

Trent Mankelow → 30 min Talk

:::: Afternoon Break ::::
16:00h to 16:30h @ Capital 1 & 2
HOW CISCO USES TPI TO DRIVE UX IMPROVEMENTS ON THE SUPPORT WEBSITE

Bill Skeet → 30 min Talk

16:00h to 16:30h @ Capital 3
THE LEAN UX DIET: How a Boulder UX/UI agency switched from waterfall to agile and lost a collective 100 pounds in the process.

Kevin Menzie → 30 min Talk

This talk will explore the evolution of an agency moving from a traditional waterfall approach to a lean/agile methodology around user experience strategy and user interface design. We’ll talk about what worked and what didn’t and how Lean UX has allowed us to grow, relieve stress, and, believe it or not, lose weight.

16:30h to 17:00h @ Capital 1 & 2
DESIGN ESSENTIALS FOR NON-DESIGNERS

RJ Owen & Michael Salamon → 30 min Talk

16:30h to 17:00h @ Capital 3
TOP USABILITY MISTAKES - Lessons learned from over 100,000 usability tests

Darrell Benatar → 30 min Talk

17:00h to 17:30h @ Capital 1 & 2
DEMYSTIFYING LEAN: Going to Gemba

Scott Leek → 30 min Talk

This presentation debunks many of the mythologies surrounding the philosohpies and methodologies of Lean. Starting with the fundamental premise that value is defined by the customer, the presentation reviews the principles of Lean in the context of the 21st century economy, and what this means to you and your organization. Connect your organization’s day-to-day activities with Lean concepts and “learn to see” in ways that fundamentally transform how you lead, manage, and work.

17:00h to 17:30h @ Capital 3
USABILITY OF HOSPITAL RATING SITES

Prof. Dr. Uwe Sander → 30 min Talk

17:30h to 18:00h @ Capital 1 & 2
FIRST IMPRESSIONS OF WEBSITE USABILITY

Jeff Sauro → 30 min Talk

FRIDAY Sep. 21st - 9:00 am to 5:00 pm
Post Conference Workshops and Tutorials
LEAN UX: Building a shared understanding to get out of the deliverables business → Half Day AM Workshop

Jeff Gothelf

GETTING BUY-IN FOR UX RESEARCH → Half Day AM Workshop

Tomer Sharon

FUNDAMENTALS OF USABILITY TESTING → Half Day AM Workshop

Jim Lewis

14:00h to 17:00h
USER EXPERIENCE METRICS 101 → Half Day PM Workshop

Bill Albert

14:00h to 17:00h
MULTIVARIATE TESTING → Half Day PM Workshop

Scott Leek

14:00h to 17:00h
GETTING LEAN: Practical tips & tricks from the trenches → Half Day PM Workshop

Jon Innes