Five Low-Hanging UX Tips

Pek Pongpaet
Pek Pongpaet is the VP of Technology and Product for SpotOn Inc., and the award winning creator of ShelfLuv.com and BizTome iPad app. Pongpaet’s expertise ranges from product design and development, and martial arts. Prior to SpotOn, Pongpaet worked at Accenture Technology Labs in the research department coming up with next generation user interfaces. At Roundarch, a technology and strategy consulting firm, Pongpaet’s work included envisioning and designing the dashboard of the future for the Tesla Model S electric car.

Think Outside the Box, but Don’t Forget the Box Exists

[email protected] | Tammy Guy

Tammy Guy
Tammy Guy is the founder of a visual design and usability consulting firm focused on strategic brand planning, creative direction and diffusion of user experience problems by applying design theory and usability best practices in a rapidly changing Web environment. Her firm provides consulting services (e-commerce solutions, mobile apps and tablet experience) to clients from various industries such as fashion retail, commodity retail, pharmaceutical, insurance, financial services, social networking and others. Services include product evaluation, strategy and planning, creative development and direction and usability consulting. With more then 16 years of experience, Tammy previously worked as the Creative Director at LivePerson, Inc. and was a Design Group Manager at the Hertz Corporation where she art-directed all aspects of graphical application development for all customer facing websites. In addition, Tammy has been a frequent guest speaker with the Nielsen Norman Group for the past few years, teaching visual design and usability workshops. She also teaches similar design and usability courses with General Assembly in New York City.

Why UXers should join Code for America

[email protected] | Jeremy Canfield

Jeremy Canfield
This user does not have bio yet.

Why Mobile UX is More Than “Users On-The-Go”

[email protected] | Laura Hampton

Laura Hampton
Zabisco are digital user experience agency who produce engaging designs and content for websites and mobile. They work with clients of all sizes and sectors on strategy, production and sustainable online marketing. Zabisco has built up a positive reputation within the industry and with clients alike, centring all work on an understanding of the end user. Led by managing director Hammad Khan, who has worked extensively in user experience and continues to provide consultation in the area, Zabisco’s ability to combine functionality and usability with design and engagement has led them to work with an impressive client portfolio, including Barclays, the British Heart Foundation, Toshiba and the IET. Zabisco’s core services are User Experience, Content Engagement, Websites & Mobile and Digital Marketing, based around a team of information architects, copywriters, designers, marketers and developers. Laura Hampton works within Content Engagement and Digital Marketing; a role which is varied but always centred on engaging the end user through content, from text to video and infographics, and through the use of social media and search to build up real brand affiliations. Laura’s articles on UX Magazine draw on her knowledge and that of her colleagues to cover a range of topics within UX. For more articles and blog posts from Zabisco, visit their blog at www.zabisco.com/blog or follow them on Twitter @Zabisco.

Designing for Tomorrow

[email protected] | Jon Duhig

Jon Duhig

Jon is based in Sydney, Australia where he currently works as a UX Consultant for Stamford Interactive. His previous work includes research for Canon and British Telecom where he developed concepts for future uses of technology and research into technology trends.

Five Popular Web Strategies That Don’t Work

[email protected] | Scott McDonald

Scott McDonald

Scott McDonald is co-founder and managing director of Modus Associates, a digital innovation and design consultancy based in New York City. A frequent industry speaker and writer, he has advised global brands including Morgan Stanley & Co., Sony, Citibank and SIRIUS Satellite Radio, among others.

UX Concerns Across Mobile Platforms

[email protected] | Joseph Labrecque

Joseph Labrecque

Joseph Labrecque is primarily employed by the University of Denver as Senior Interactive Software Engineer specializing in the Adobe Flash Platform, where he produces innovative academic toolsets for both traditional desktop environments and emerging mobile spaces. Alongside this principal role, he often serves as adjunct faculty, communicating upon a variety of Flash Platform solutions and general web design and development subjects. In addition to his accomplishments in higher education, Joseph is the Proprietor of Fractured Vision Media, LLC a digital media production company, technical consultancy, and distribution vehicle for his creative works. He is founder and sole abiding member of the dark ambient recording project “An Early Morning Letter, Displaced” whose releases have received international award nominations and underground acclaim. Joseph has contributed to a number of respected community publications as an article writer and video tutorialist and is author of the Flash Development for Android Cookbook, Packt Publishing (2011), What’s New in Adobe AIR 3, O’Reilly Media (2011), What’s New in Flash Player 11, O’Reilly Media (2011), Adobe Edge Quickstart Guide, Packt Publishing (2012), Learning Adobe Edge, Packt Publishing (2012), and serves as author on a number of video training publications through Video2Brain, Adobe Press, and Peachpit Press. He regularly speaks at user group meetings and industry conferences such as Adobe MAX, FITC, D2W, 360|Flex, and a variety of other educational and technical conferences. In 2010, he received an Adobe Impact award in recognition of his outstanding contribution to the education community. He has served as an Adobe Education Leader since 2008 and is also an Adobe Community Professional. Visit him on the web at https://josephlabrecque.com.

Change on a Dime: Agile Design

[email protected] | John Anderson

John Anderson
John Anderson (@Jrileyd) is a User Experience Designer and Certified Usability Analyst at Asynchrony Solutions, Inc., a leader in Agile software development. He collaborates with a variety of teams in the industries of healthcare, real estate, and government focused on crafting custom mobile and web applications. For more information, visit https://blog.asolutions.com.

The Citizen Experience Needs Us

[email protected] | Cyd Harrell

Cyd Harrell

Cyd Harrell is UX Evangelist at Code for America, where she gets to spend all day helping create better experiences for citizens. She encourages like-minded UXers to apply for the 2014 CfA Fellowship. Before its acquisition in June 2012, she was VP of UX Research at Bolt Peters in San Francisco.

Know Without Thinking: Instinct in UX

[email protected] | Taylor Bastien

Taylor Bastien

Taylor Bastien is a Senior Systems Analyst at 4Point in Ottawa, Canada where he spends much of his time designing custom desktop and mobile Rich Internet Applications (RIAs) using Flex, Java and HTML/Javascript.

Drawn from an early age by the allure of software development's creative possibilities, Taylor took a slight detour from that career path out of high school, earning a B.A. in French Studies and becoming involved in theatre. After creating his first web page in 1994, he rediscovered his passion for designing software, went on to earn a B.Sc. in Computer Science and has worked as a developer in some capacity ever since. Given his somewhat eclectic background (and some would say personality), Taylor espouses a multidisciplinary approach to custom software design, being convinced that by harnessing bold imagination, sound technical skill and old-fashioned common sense, modern day developers are on the threshold of a new creative Renaissance.

Taylor has lived in Belgium, Germany and three Canadian provinces, speaks English and French fluently and has (sadly) become quite rusty at German and Dutch.

Always eager to discuss innovative ways of creating software, when he has time, Taylor jots down many of his musings on his blogs at https://blogs.4point.com/taylor.bastien and https://.RIAGrande.com On twitter, he’s @riagrande.

Overcoming Halfhearted User Adoption

[email protected] | Don Bruns

Don Bruns
Don Bruns is a managing director in the User Experience practice at NavigationArts, a Washington, DC based digital consultancy. Bruns has seventeen years of experience in delivering web-based solutions with a focus on information architecture, rapid prototyping, and user research. As a veteran of Razorfish and Aquilent, Bruns has led client engagements for such high profile clients as KPMG, Bank of NY Mellon, AARP, U.S. Department of State, and USA.gov, the official web portal of the United States federal government. He has been a featured speaker at KMWorld and Gilbane conferences. You can find him at donbruns.net.

Is Your Brochure An Interesting Read?

| Elias Parker

Bubblewrap 2.0

[email protected] | Alex Schleifer

Alex Schleifer
Alex is CEO of Sideshow , an award winning creative agency. You can read his blog here.

Google makes URLs Goo.gl

[email protected] | Constantinos Demetriadis

Constantinos Demetriadis

Constantinos Demetriadis is a full time freelancer working from his personal digital design studio "Lovely Productions", basd in Athens, Greece.

In 1998 he earned his Bachelor of Arts in Industrial Design, but at the same time he got acquainted to the internet, which ultimately won his heart.

His professional career started when, in 1999, he started working for HellasNet as a Web Designer, and in a very short period he obtained the position of Art Director for FUTURENEED, a business unit of the same company. Since then he has been actively involved in numerous award winning projects, with the highlight in 2002 when he won the Ermis Gold and Grand Ermis for the site of Naftemporiki. Other awarded projects include the personal site of Demis Nikolaides (2003), FORTHnet’s portal site (2004) and the Ermis Awards site (2005).

His client roster includes BP, Coca-Cola, Lenovo, DHL, Interamerican, Naftemporiki and OTENET among others.

On a personal level, he has been involved in the creation and development of ProjectNeo, a Greek design community which launched in November 2000. In 2003 it was awarded an Ermis Gold in the Amateur / Non Commercial Sites category. ProjectNeo ended its journey in November 2005, when it reached a full 5 years in operation.

The Art of the Selfless

[email protected] | Cahlan Sharp

Cahlan Sharp

Back in 2004, Cahlan Sharp was planning on being a dentist. After working as an editor for online high school courses, however, he became fascinated with web technology. A year and a half later, he had taught himself the basics of web markup, Flash, PHP, and was working as a multimedia developer for a global non-profit organization. Cahlan has been building internet experiences since then, and is currently an entrepreneur and web engineer. He has taught various university classes and corporate workshops on web technologies.

Cahlan began a consulting company that placed fourth among student-run business in the state of Utah. He received his Master's degree in Instructional Psychology from Brigham Young University in 2010, and continues to build businesses as well as web products.

In late 2011, Cahlan joined Undrip, a social media technology company.

Cahlan is a married father of three and speaks Portuguese, Spanish and English.

Let’s Be Frank

[email protected] | Christian Saylor

Christian Saylor
Christian Saylor is a Senior UX Design Specialist at Universal Mind. He specializes in bridging the gap between functionality and aesthetics, delivering beautiful, effective digital experiences to his work for clients. With 15 years of experience in the interactive design community, he sees the user experience as the touchstone of interaction—the connection point through which a message is heard, a purchase is made, or a thought inspired. His goal is to engage users on a personal level independent of medium, using design to meet them where they are and in ways they’re comfortable with, whether that’s via a mobile or embedded device, a car, a website, or even a well-designed t-shirt. In order to disconnect with all digital aspects of life Christian loves opening up a good book, spending time with his family and on occasion giving back to the design community by teaching at Kendall College of Art and Design.

Crossing the Creative Divide

[email protected] | Mark Baskinger

Mark Baskinger

Mark Baskinger is an associate professor in the School of Design at Carnegie Mellon University who teaches courses in industrial design with an emphasis on form & interaction. His interests include exploring new paradigms for interactive objects and interpretive environments, and methodologies of design drawing and visual thinking to promote collaboration. He has published papers and articles on the language of designed artifacts, inclusive/universal design, visual “noise” in product design, tangible interaction, and methodologies of visualization.

Baskinger currently serves as a researcher with the Quality of Life Technology Engineering Research Center through Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Pittsburgh; he is a core faculty member in the Master of Tangible Interaction Design program through Carnegie Mellon’s School of Architecture (mTID), is an affiliate faculty member of the Human-Computer Interaction Institute (HCII) at Carnegie Mellon and collaborates with the /d.search-labs at the Technische Universiteit Eindhoven, The Netherlands (TU/e).

An international speaker and workshop leader, Mark also conducts Drawing Ideas®: A Field Guide to Visual Thinking courses in conference and business contexts where he makes design drawing methods and visual thinking techniques accessible to a broader audience and demonstrates strategies for using sketching to foster collaboration in design processes. His work has been featured in design publications and international magazines, and has been exhibited in numerous galleries and museums, including the Museum of Modern Art (New York), I-Space Gallery (Chicago), the Krannert Museum (Illinois) and the Regina Gouger Miller Gallery (Pittsburgh). His work is also included in the permanent art collection of the University of Illinois.

He has won numerous design awards from ID Magazine and the Industrial Designers Society of America (IDEA) and personally holds multiple product patents. Prior to joining Carnegie Mellon, Baskinger was creative director at Corchia Woliner Rhoda in New York City, and was the lead designer at the Central Park Zoo - Exhibits and Graphic Arts Dept. He also held a visiting faculty position in the School of Art and Design (https://art.uiuc.edu) at the University of Illinois (UIUC). Parallel to his appointment at Carnegie Mellon, he co-directs The Letter Thirteen Design Agency, and is a founding member of the EcoDesigners Guild of Pittsburgh.

Hi, I’m a UX Developer – You’re a what?

[email protected] | Tim R. Todish

Tim R. Todish

Tim Todish has been working in the Web/RIA industry for more than 10 years. After cutting his teeth on HTML, ASP and SQL, he shifted his focus from back-end technologies to developing rich front-end experiences with early builds of Flex and AIR. Tim has a passion for using technology to create engaging user experiences across multiple devices.

From his years working closely with creatives and designers for companies including Meijer, Inc and Crowe, Tim has developed the unique ability to view both the technical and creative sides of any challenge. This has also honed his talent for bringing “techies” and “non-techies” together, fostering cross-cultural communication between the two.

Tim is currently working as a UX Designer for Maestro.

End-to-End Experience Design

[email protected] | Theresa Neil

Theresa Neil
Theresa Neil is an independent interface designer based in Austin, Texas. She has led the design for more than 80 live web, desktop and mobile applications since 2001. Recent clients include PayPal, Pearson, UnboundID and a number of start-ups. Her portfolio and blog are at www.theresaneil.com. Theresa and Bill Scott co-authored "Designing Web Interfaces: Principles and Patterns for Rich Interactions" published by O’Reilly Media in January of 2009. More about the book including the Flickr photo stream and blog are at www.designingwebinterfaces.com.

Being Predictable

[email protected], [email protected], [email protected] | Corrina Liao Ph.D., Different, Bec Purser

Corrina Liao Ph.D.
Corrina Liao had extensive product design experience prior to moving to Sydney, Australia – as part of the User Experience Design Team at Dell, Inc (Singapore) and prior to that, Business Imaging Division, Hewlett Packard (Singapore). As a Dell Senior Usability Category manager, Corrina successfully managed the usability portfolio of inkjet printers and Display (TVs, flat panel monitors & projectors) line of business during her tenure at Dell. At Hewlett Packard, Corrina played a pivotal role in setting up and mentoring a group of human factors professionals. In Sydney, as a Senior Usability Engineer at Silverbrook Research Pty Ltd, she managed the user experience of the wireless interactive digital pen. Recent career expansion was to join Different and venture into the world of service design research. As part of the UX team at Different, Corrina innovated and delivered experience architectural deliverables such as research findings, persona and user scenarios, interaction specifications, design requirements and customer journeys across various service sectors and industries. Currently, Corrina is working at Telstra as an UX Product Specialist. She can be contacted at [email protected]. https://au.linkedin.com/in/corrinaliao

Different
This user does not have bio yet.

Bec Purser

A Customer Experience Designer, passionate about participatory design, design strategy and ethnography with experience in finance, government, telecommunication, media and professional services.

Current obsessions include escape rooms, non-mouse interactions and quilt making.

Equipping Your UX Team for Success

[email protected] | Jordan Julien

Jordan Julien

Jordan's been a freelance experience strategist for the past 5 years, working with organizations across North America. He's in the process of establishing Hostile Sheep, a boutique experience lab created to help organizations produce better digital products and services. He's worked with brands like Coke, Nike, BMW, Canadian Olympic Committee, HP, GE, Ford, Canadian Tire, Kraft, Telus, P&G and Diageo. He's worked with agencies like Critical Mass, Razorfish, W+K, TAXI, Trapeze, Ogilvy One, Proximity/BBDO, Cheil, JWT, and others. Follow Jordan on Twitter or connect with him on LinkedIn.

An Iterative Approach to Innovation Strategy

[email protected] | Paul Noble-Campbell

Paul Noble-Campbell
Paul Noble-Campbell is Director of Design and Strategy at M3 Design. He creates opportunities through design strategy that make organizations, people and society thrive. By combining his human-centric approach with his diverse experiences, Paul creates rich brand experiences, design strategies and future visions. His collaborative leadership has guided multi-national clients through hundreds of initiatives resulting in the design of products, digital interfaces, web experiences, brand identities, interactive exhibits, interiors, packaging and environmental graphics. Twitter: @pauljnc

Peanut Butter in Denver

[email protected] | Rachel Hinman

Rachel Hinman
Rachel Hinman is a researcher, designer and a recognized thought leader in the mobile user experience field. Her passion for art, design and cultural study coupled with the belief that people can use technology to improve the human condition have been the driving forces in her career for over a decade. Currently, Rachel is a Senior Research Scientist at the Nokia Research Center in Palo Alto, California. There she focuses on the research and design of emergent and experimental mobile interfaces and mobile experiences for emerging markets. Prior to joining Nokia, Rachel was and experience design director at Adaptive Path, and a mobile researcher and strategist for Yahoo's mobile group. Rachel's innate sensitivity to people and culture have proven powerful skills in the field, enabling her to successfully lead research studies on mobile phone usage in the US, Europe, Asia and Africa. Rachel writes and speaks frequently on the topic of mobile research and design. She is the creative force behind the 90 Mobiles in 90 Days Project and her perspectives on mobile user experience have been featured in Interactions Magazine, BusinessWeek and Wired. Currently, Rachel is writing The Mobile Frontier: A Guide for Designing Mobile User Experiences with Rosenfeld Media. Expected publication is winter of 2011. Rachel holds a Masters Degree in Design from the Institute of Design in Chicago.

The Creative, The Artist and The Communicator

[email protected] | Cynthia Thomas

Cynthia Thomas
Cynthia Thomas is partner at Translator, a digital experience agency focused on connecting online and offline, customer and brand, and person-to-person through smartly designed experiences. She leads strategy, conceptual incubation and user experience thinking for agency clients, helping them navigate the digital landscape. Cynthia’s passion for the UX discipline and experience thinking as a whole has driven her focus on studying the social, cultural and behavioral influence of the digital space on human interactions and expectations. A digital native, Cynthia started out in her career both as a web designer and a developer writing code. This hands-on experience gradually led to an interest in strategy and user experience design, which she parlayed into a job within the interactive group at Laughlin/Constable, one of Milwaukee's largest ad agencies. It was there she introduced research, strategy and the UX discipline to LC’s process. In 2005 she joined Fullhouse as an Interactive Strategist, refocusing and establishing the UX discipline and parlaying it into a service offering for the agency. During this time, she also introduced experience design (XD) as both a team structure and philosophical approach to solutioning, helped implement a collaborative work environment. She speaks and writes on the subject of user experience and experience design on a regular basis, and is a frequent contributor to the Translator blog Just Sayin’.

Evaluating UX by Measuring Task Efficiency

[email protected] | Cathleen Zapata

Cathleen Zapata
Cathleen Zapata is currently the Vice President of Research and Customer Experience at Metrics Marketing Group, an analytics-driven database and interactive marketing firm in Cleveland. She is also the President of the Northeast Ohio chapter of the Usability Professionals’ Association, one of the most trusted organizations in the field of usability with over 2500 members worldwide. Cathy has over 15 years experience in quantitative and qualitative research, specializing in usability. Her background includes a wealth of experience in usability testing, eye tracking, heuristic evaluations, user research and conversion enhancement strategies. She is the architect and manager of MetricsLab^SM, a groundbreaking research facility in Cleveland, Ohio, making Metrics Marketing the only interactive marketing firm with a full solution of both owned in-lab and mobile eye tracking across the entire Midwest. Cathy has been featured in MarketingSherpa, About.com, Crain's Cleveland Business and The Columbus Dispatch, and regularly teaches on topics of usability and conversion strategies at colleges, conferences and events internationally, including Shop.org, BAI Retail Delivery, UPA, and more. She has worked with numerous Fortune 500 companies to improve their user experiences including American Greetings, Sherwin-Williams, Coach, Inc., Midas, Speedway, KeyBank, Citizens Bank, The Cleveland Clinic, Medical Mutual of Ohio, Nationwide Insurance, and more.

The Fight for Better Experiences

[email protected] | Jonathan Anderson | UX Magazine

Jonathan Anderson | UX Magazine

I am a tech-focused jack of all trades and the editor-in-chief of UX Magazine. I'm also the author of Effective UI: The Art of Building Great User Experience in Software, published by O'Reilly Media. Through its partnership with UX Magazine, I am also a senior advisor to Didus, a recruiting and career development company focused on user-centered professionals. As well, I'm engaged as the Managing Director, Product Strategy & Design for Dapperly, a fashion-oriented software product startup, and am the Principal of First Day, a small private equity and consulting company. From 2005 to 2009, I helped found EffectiveUI, a leading UX strategy, design, and development agency focused on web, desktop, and mobile systems.

I’ve been fortunate to participate in work that’s on the leading edge of user-centered strategy and design, customer experience, and software development. Everything is converging around an increased attention to the quality of user experiences, around web-enabled or web-like software, and around technologies that can create unified experiences across multiple platforms, devices, and applications. I’ve built on my experience at UX Magazine, EffectiveUI, and in writing my book to undertake a major project to find ways to make dramatic improvements to the user-centered field and to increase the perception of user-centered design, research, and technology as being core strategic values.

My work can be very hard to explain because what I do day-to-day is extremely varied since my role is usually to be a jack-of-all-trades. If I’m performing any one job function this week or month, it’s always in the broader context of fulfilling the needs of that business (whatever they might be) and in the even broader context of the private equity holding and management activities of First Day.

My primary value has been to be an adaptable, fearless, fast-learning manager of and versatile resource to a large number of small businesses, where I hold the line in diverse functions while the companies are too small to hire specialized professionals for any given part of their business. This means I’ve had my hands in almost every aspect of starting, growing, and managing a small business, including finance, accounting, legal, management, HR, marketing/brand, PR, IT, resource management, facilities, general operations, corporate governance, project management, product development, change management, and many others.

New York Post’s Smarter Clipboard

[email protected] | Alex Rainert

Alex Rainert
Alex has been working in the interactive industry for 12 years. He's spent that time working on a variety of platforms on the interactive agency side and as the co-founder of a startup, dodgeball.com (acquired by Google in 2005). Since then, he's managed the UX and Creative teams at Schematic NY and is currently working with a local startup on an early 2010 launch. Over the years, he's done work for clients including Verizon Wireless, Nokia, HBO, IBM, CBS, Core Performance, Freshdirect and Thomson Reuters. He blogs about innovation in design at everydayux.com, his sub-140 character thoughts can be found at @arainert and he consults on mobile, social and emerging technologies at Tinker Studio.

Best visualization projects of 2008

[email protected] | Alex Schleifer

Alex Schleifer
Alex is CEO of Sideshow , an award winning creative agency. You can read his blog here.

A Case for Mentorship

[email protected] | Scott Baldwin

Scott Baldwin

I'm a father, husband and a sometimes night-owl with a deep affection for salads, water and cherry Nibs. An IxDA mentor and former UX’er at nForm, Critical Mass and Habanero Consulting Group, I can now be found at Central 1 Credit Union where I'm a Senior Product Manager, Direct Banking and overseeing a wide range of online, web and phone banking products used by 300+ Canadian credit unions and a number of banks.

The Case Against On-Staff IAs

[email protected] | Hana Schank

Hana Schank
Hana Schank has been in Information Architecture for 14 years. She began her career at Andersen Consulting where she designed an award-winning interactive training program, and went on to work on designing the first website for CBS News. As the first hands-on Information Architect at OgilvyInteractive, Hana helped to establish a detailed documentation methodology and information architecture process which led to successful engagements for several clients who were designing and building sites for the first time. In her role as Director of Information Architecture at Zentropy Partners, she developed an IA process for the global organization, as well as leading the information architecture development for a range of high profile clients. Hana founded Collective User Experience in 2003, and now oversees all IA and UX work in addition to working directly with a range of clients to help make their web sites and applications more usable. Hana and several of the team members from CollectiveUX blog about IA in the real world at beautifulbutdumb.blogspot.com. She has finally broken down and started tweeting @hanaschank. Hana lives in Brooklyn, NY.

Service Design

[email protected] | Megan Grocki

Megan Grocki
Megan bakes the best brownies on the planet. The end. Actually, that's just the beginning. Sassy, smiling and straightforward, Megan’s a senior member of Mad*Pow’s experience design team. With over 15 years of experience in research and experience design, Megan specializes in helping clients discover the attitudes, intents and behaviors of their users and understand what is truly important to them. By being the ultimate user advocate, she is able to improve the organization and presentation of content and refine the messaging in a way that rings true with the audience(s) and meets business goals. She has worked with clients including Bank of America, Aetna, Constant Contact and McKesson to sharpen their understanding of their audiences and design new digital experiences steeped in rigorous research and design thinking. She has been able to flex her marketing strategy muscles, creating new brand identities and developing clear and meaningful strategies for evolving brands. Until recently, Megan was also the mastermind behind Mad*Pow’s marketing strategy. From evaluating market conditions to directing digital marketing and social media strategies, Megan guided the marketing direction for all our events and promotional activities while collaborating with sales to support them in generating maximum buzz. Now that she has passed the Marketing torch, she is happy to wear just one hat as Experience Design Director. Prior to Mad*Pow, Megan served as marketing manager with Momenta as well as senior product manager and user interface manager at Bottomline Technologies. Megan holds a BA from the University of New Hampshire and is always seeking to continue her education by attending conferences, seminars and reading her weight in UX books. She is a founding member of the NHUPA. Her speaking gigs have included Refresh Boston, the 2010 IA Summit in Phoenix, the 2010 Usability Professionals' Association International conference in Munich, 2010 UPA Boston and Interaction11 in Boulder. In addition she served as IxDA’s Interaction12 conference program director. A die-hard tennis fan, Megan enjoys traveling the world, splashing in the waves at her favorite local beach and coffee shop-hopping around town with her husband and two young children. Megan is on Twitter at @megangrocki.

UX Tips for Non UX Designers

[email protected] | Dan Florio

Dan Florio
Dan Florio was an average designer who learned enough about writing code to become average at it as well. But he liked coding more than designing. Besides, it makes a great deal more money. Plus, all clients think they can design and create good UX. But none of them think they can write code. Back in 2008 he quit working for Microsoft XBox and became a freelance developer. It seemed that Flex was in high demand so he set out to teach himself to become a Flex/Actionscript developer. He needed a good project to work on that would push his skills to improve so he turned to an old idea he had about making a website that would help people know the best times to run and pee during a movie. He built it. Named it RunPee and then watched it spend a year being lonely and getting no visitors. Then someone in the media - Leo Laporte - learned about it. And others learned about it from him and so on and so on. Eventually Dan was doing radio interviews for stations as far away as South Africa. RunPee was surprisingly a success. Dan now lives in the South Bay area of Los Angeles where he is working hard - hardly working - to create another successful project. Most aren't but it's fun trying. You can read Dan's developer blog at polyGeek.com.

The Expanding Role of User Experience Design

[email protected] | Aarron Walter

Aarron Walter
Aarron Walter is the user experience design lead for MailChimp. Aarron writes about web design for industry publications, and has written a few books, the latest of which is Designing for Emotion to be published in the summer of 2011 by A Book Apart. He's also 50% of the magic behind the UX Sketchbook, an essential tool for capturing interface design ideas. Follow his ramblings on Twitter: @aarron.

A Gamification Framework for Interaction Designers

[email protected] | Aarron Walter

Capturing What You’re Not Implementing

[email protected] | Frank Garofalo

Frank Garofalo
Frank Garofalo is a user experience architect living in Kansas City. Currently, he has two roles, one running his own company Cyber View, an online media and interactive solutions agency, and second as a User Experience Developer for Garmin International. He started designing and building web sites in 1999. Frank has a Master of Science in Computer Graphics Technology with a specialization in qualitative research for interactive multimedia from Purdue University. His passion lies in producing quality experiences for users by combining creative designs and functional development to achieve a balance of information architecture. You can follow him on Twitter @fgarofalo.

Product Identity at VMware

[email protected] | Harry Vertelney

Harry Vertelney
Harry Vertelney is currently Director of R&D of User Experience at VMware. He has 30 years of continuous experience working for such industry leaders as VMware, Apple, Intuit, Sun Microsystems and Pacific Bell as an individual contributor and manager. He has received several domestic and international patents. Harry has degrees from the University of Southern California and California State University. He is passionate about building high performing teams and relentlessly pursues design excellence.

What Do You Have to Do to Get Your Way?

[email protected] | Jonathan Anderson | UX Magazine

Jonathan Anderson | UX Magazine

Approaching Data with a Beginner’s Mind

[email protected] | Hunter Whitney

Hunter Whitney
Hunter Whitney is a consultant, author, and instructor who brings a distinct UX design perspective to data visualization. He has advised corporations, start-ups, government agencies, and NGOs to achieve their goals through a thoughtful, strategic design approach to digital products and services. Hunter is the author of "Data Insights: New Ways to Visualize and Make Sense of Data”. He was also asked to contribute a chapter in the book, “Designing for Emerging Technologies: UX for Genomics, Robotics, and the Internet of Things”. Additionally, Hunter has written numerous articles covering a range of subjects for various online and print publications including UX Magazine.

Concept to Code

[email protected] | Ryan Betts

Ryan Betts
Ryan Betts (@hitsmachines) is an interaction designer at Nitobi Software, creators of PhoneGap. He holds a BSc in Interaction Design from Simon Fraser University. Presently focused on designing and developing for mobile phones and tablets, he is very excited about the future of urban computing.

Finding Your Mobile Niche

[email protected], [email protected] | Kim Bartowski, Andrew Carlson

Kim Bartowski
Kim is a creative director with 12 years of experience working for entertainment, travel and luxury brands. She arrived at Digitas in 2007 and is currently a group creative director overseeing an integrated team on American Express and heads up all mobile projects for DTAS North America. Since joining Digitas, she's directed worldwide campaigns and productions for Delta and American Express, and pitched and won the Comcast business. Prior to joining Digitas she was in Miami working on the many niche and luxury brands in the region. She launched campaigns for the opening of the W Hotels in South Beach and Ft. Lauderdale, and created brand campaigns and imagery for clients like the Ritz-Carlton among others. Before Miami, she was an art director at top Philadelphia agency—Red Tettemer, where she created campaigns for vast amounts of cable TV networks including: the launch of Rainbow Network’s WE tv (Women’s Entertainment Channel), AMC, and Comcast just to name a few. During those five years she worked heavily on Comcast as they quickly became the biggest cable network in the US. In addition, Kim has won a number of awards for the work she’s done including One Show, Communication Arts, FWA and a feature in Contagious Magazine. Kim graduated from Rochester Institute of Technology and lives in New York City with her husband Michael Ferrare.

Andrew Carlson
Andrew Carlson is a VP/Creative Director focusing on UX and design for the Digitas Mobile team. Throughout his career, Andrew has focused on interactive design, product and service development, creating experiences meant to maximize customer enjoyment and client benefit while pushing the medium to its limits. Andrew blogs about mobile and digital design at https://tempodesign.tumblr.com/

How to Fix the 5 Most Common Mistakes with Focus Groups

[email protected] | Jay Eskenazi

Jay Eskenazi
Jay Eskenazi (@jayeskenazi) is a seasoned user researcher and manager of user research teams, and has personally conducted or supervised 500+ usability studies in the U.S. and internationally since 1999. His research career spans 20 years, with the last 12+ years focused on user interface issues. Prior to co-founding Customer Experience Labs, a boutique usability firm, he worked as a user researcher on Microsoft’s e commerce properties and then created and served as Director of the User Experience Research team at Expedia for 7+ years. Jay earned his B.A. in Psychology from University of California at Santa Cruz, an M.A. in Communication (Social Psychology) from University of California at Santa Barbara, and an M.A. in Psychology and a Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology from Alliant International University in San Diego.

Cognitive Styles

[email protected] | Tyler Tate

Tyler Tate
Tyler Tate is a user experience designer focused on making the complex feel simple. He's also the founder of Crema.co, empowering you to discover single-origin coffees, get to know the people who grew them, and have the beans delivered to your door. Tyler lives in London with his wife Ruth and son Galileo. You can keep up with him on Twitter.

Win a Copy of “100 Things Every Designer Needs to Know About People”

[email protected] | UX Magazine Staff

UX Magazine Staff
UX Magazine was created to be a central, one-stop resource for everything related to user experience. Our primary goal is to provide a steady stream of current, informative, and credible information about UX and related fields to enhance the professional and creative lives of UX practitioners and those exploring the field. Our content is driven and created by an impressive roster of experienced professionals who work in all areas of UX and cover the field from diverse angles and perspectives.

100 Things Every Designer Needs to Know About People

[email protected] | Susan Weinschenk, Ph.D.

Susan Weinschenk, Ph.D.
Susan Weinschenk first used a computer in the mid-1970’s, in graduate school. "I wrote and ran my first computer program, and the printer spit out a piece of paper that said 'JOB ABORTED.' Rather than being discouraged I was fascinated! What would happen when 'normal people,' not computer scientists, interacted with these things called computers?" She thus started a 30-year career in applying psychology to the design of technology. Susan has a Ph.D. in Psychology and is the author of How to Get People To Do Stuff, 100 Things Every Designer Needs To Know About People, 100 Things Every Presenter Needs to Know About People, and Neuro Web Design: What makes them click. She is a presenter, speaker, and consulting, writes a popular popular blog at her website, and also writes the Brain Wise blog at Psychology Today.

UX: Don’t Hate, Participate

[email protected] | Stephanie Arnold

Stephanie Arnold
Stephanie Arnold is the Executive Director of User Experience Design at AT&T Interactive, the cross-platform local advertising branch of AT&T. She leads a team of information architects, usability researchers, and visual designers that support AT&T Interactive's consumer and advertiser products. Stephanie has worked in the UX industry for 8 years, having previously worked at Kelley Blue Book, Perot Systems and Travelocity. She has a strong background in Human-Computer-Interaction (HCI), with a B.A. in Psychology and an M.A. in Human Factors, and is a strong believer in the saying "Keep It Simple." Besides being a UX fanatic, she is also an Apple gadget geek, a die-hard UCLA fan, and someone who gets the breaking news from her Facebook news feed.

Designing & Selecting Components for UIs

[email protected] | Donna Maurer Spencer

Donna Maurer Spencer
Donna (Maurer) Spencer is a freelance information architect, mentor, writer and trainer. She has eight years’ experience working in-house and as a consultant doing strategic and tactical design. She has designed large intranets and Web sites, ecommerce and search systems, business applications, design patterns and a CMS. Donna is an experienced speaker who has taught workshops and presented sessions at local and international conferences, on information architecture, interaction design and whatever else crosses her mind. She spends her (little) remaining time on the board of IAI and writing a book on card sorting. Sometimes she even gets time to weave and sew.

Communicating the UX Value Proposition

[email protected], [email protected] | Matt Miller, John Dilworth

Matt Miller
Matt Miller currently resides in Bountiful, Utah with his wife and three children. He has over twelve years of experience in web design and development. He has an undergraduate degree and completed graduate coursework in Exercise Physiology from the University of Utah which led him to his first career as a Kinesiologist. Along the way he worked part-time in the IT world and developed his first web site using HTML 2.0 in 1996. In 1998 he transitioned from software development as a secondary job responsibility to his full-time gig. Now he has over twelve years of enterprise web application design and development experience from his employment at Intermountain Healthcare and the LDS Church where he is currently employed as an interaction designer. While his degree is atypical for a design career the academic and years of real-world research methodology and statistics experience has proven valuable in the design and creation of metrics and dashboards. In addition to having a passion for creating enterprise software for real people and developing metrics that actually mean something he enjoys photography, running, cycling, hiking and most outdoor activities that don’t involve freezing temperatures. As a personal project to keep his development skills up to date and fund his obsession with outdoor gear he has created GearCodes.com. Home remodeling projects fill any remaining time in his life and inspired his newest blog The Plywood Floor Experiment. Other Websites & Blogs

John Dilworth
John Dilworth currently resides in Ogden, Utah with his wife and two children. He has been working in the field of interactive media and design for over 15 years. Through his career, John has been involved in numerous media projects for both local and international business. He has a passion for art, design, and how technology influences the lives of people. He holds a BFA in visual communications from Weber State University and an MFA in Computer Arts from the Academy of Fine Arts in San Francisco, California. John is currently Sr. Director of User Experience at Ancestry and maintains his own fine art studio to develop his personal artwork. He also enjoys getting away from computers and is active in trail running, mountaineering, rock climbing and mountain biking. More information can be found on his personal website: https://.johndilworth.com Other Websites & Blogs https://store.johndilworth.com https://.northtemple.com Twitter: @johndilworth

Understanding Designer-Developer Workflow

[email protected] | Brian Genisio

Brian Genisio
Brian Genisio is a passionate software consultant at SRT Solutions in Ann Arbor, MI and an active member of the Midwest software community. For over 10 years, Brian has worked with many languages and technologies. Currently, he is focusing on RIA technologies in Silverlight and Flex while exploring dynamic concepts in his static world. He also loves to talk about testing philosophies and methodologies. He can talk your ear off. Just humor him. In his spare time, he enjoys being a cooking nerd which includes traditional barbecue, baking bread, brewing beer and making as much as he can from scratch. https://HouseOfBilz.com https://ActionLinq.org @BrianGenisio

You Are Solving The Wrong Problem

[email protected] | Aza Raskin

Aza Raskin

Called an interface guru by publications like Wired and Fast Company, Aza is the co-founder of Massive Health, and was until recently Creative Lead for Firefox. Previously, he was a founding member of Mozilla Labs. Aza gave his first talk on user interface at age 10 and got hooked. At 17, he was talking and consulting internationally. Aza has founded and sold two companies, including Songza.com, a minimalist music search engine that had over a million song plays in its first week. He also creates modular cardboard furniture called Bloxes. In another life, Aza has done Dark Matter research at both Tokyo University and the University of Chicago, from where he graduated with honors in math and physics.

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