Sorry for the late notice on this, but we just got the word ourselves. User interface expert Jared Spool will be in town tonight to speak at Puget Sound SIGCHI. From the PS-SIGCHI email:
“Experience Design is a centerpiece of boardroom discussions and quickly becoming a key performance indicator for many businesses.At tonight’s Puget Sound SIGCHI meeting, Jared Spool will tell us what it takes to build a design team that meets today’s needs. Spool, founder of User Interface Engineering, will discuss designs from Apple’s iPod, Netflix, the Mayo Clinic, and Southwest Airlines, to name a few.
No registration is required for this free meeting of Puget Sound SIGCHI, the Seattle-area association of user-centered design professionals.”
Click past the jump to see more details.
Location: The Boardroom in the One Union Square Building, 7th and Union in
downtown Seattle (Directions below)
Networking starts at 6 pm, with the presentation at 7 pm. Job
announcements will follow.
Experience design is no longer a nice-to-have luxury of a few
organizations with tons of money and exceptional visionary management.
It’s become commonplace for organizations that build products and web
sites.
However, you can’t just hire a couple of “experience designers” and
tell them, “Go do that voodoo that you do so well.” Today’s business
environment forces us to build multi-disciplinary teams, compiling a
diverse group of skills and experiences to handle the many facets of
the technical, business, and user requirements.
In his talk, Spool will demonstrate how successful Experience Design:
+ Must integrate the needs of the users with the requirements of the
business
+ Is learned, but not available through introspection
+ Must be invisible to succeed
+ Is cultural
+ Is multi-disciplinary
+ Thrives best in an “educate and administrate” environment
Bio
Jared M. Spool, Founding Principal
If you’ve ever seen Jared speak about usability, you know that he’s
probably the most effective, knowledgeable communicator on the subject
today. What you probably don’t know is that he has guided the research
agenda and built User Interface Engineering into the largest research
organization of its kind in the world. He’s been working in the field
of usability and design since 1978, before the term “usability” was
ever associated with computers.
Jared spends his time working with the research teams at the company,
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. He is also the conference chair and keynote speaker at the
annual User Interface Conference, is on the faculty of the Tufts
University Gordon Institute, and manages to squeeze in a fair amount
of writing time.
Location and Directions to the One Union Square Board Room
The meeting will be held in the Board Room of the One Union Square
building in Seattle, (600 University St, Seattle, WA 98101-1176).
I-5 SOUTHBOUND
- Take the Union Street exit
- Turn Left on the Seventh Avenue Drive-thru (first light just after the Union Street exit)
- The Seventh Avenue Drive-thru travels under Two Union Square. The
Garage entry is mid-block on the right. There is a fee for parking in
the garage.
I-5 NORTHBOUND
- Take the Seneca Street exit
- Turn right at the first light onto Sixth Avenue
- Take a soft right at University Street (Be careful to stay left of the concrete divider separating University Street from the freeway onramp. Turning hard right will put you onto the Freeway)
- University Street curves left and becomes the Seventh Avenue
Drive-thru behind Union Square. Look for the sign indicating the
parking garage entrance on your left. There is a fee for parking in
the garage.
In the Parking Garage
- Park near the West garage elevators. Take the West elevators to the
Fireplace Lobby. At the Fireplace Lobby, walk toward One Union Square
to your right. As you exit the Fireplace Lobby you will see escalators
on your left. The Union Square Boardroom is located directly behind
the escalators.
