Austin UPA World Usability Day

Posted on October 25, 2011 by Craig

The Austin Chapter of the Usability Professional’s Association and the Austin American Statesman present:

The Austin World Usability Day Event, Nov 10th 2011: A FREE Seminar at the Austin American Statesman

“Fires, Education and Designing for Social Change – How the Austin American-Statesman utilized social media to inform a community during Central Texas’ wildfires.”

On Sept. 4, 2011, a major fire disaster erupted within just a few hours, and swept across several parts of Central Texas.  Homes, pets and livestock were lost and two deaths were attributed to the wildfires. The Austin American-Statesman, through their reporting, web and social media efforts, became THE source for the latest fire news. Almost immediately, the Statesman’s Social Media Editor Maira Garcia, sprang into action. The Statesman’s tens of thousands of Twitter and Facebook followers turned to them for up-to-date fire coverage. The Statesman became the leader in breaking fire news. Social media became one of the primary ways for many in the community to stay informed about a live and on-going disaster.

In this free World Usability Day seminar, Maira Garcia, the Statesman’s Social Media Editor, will provide a rare glimpse into the strategy and tactics surrounding the Austin Statesman’s disaster coverage. You will learn how news was gleaned, vetted and distributed. This is a very special opportunity to hear directly from those leading the coverage how they did it, what they learned, and how education can be provided by designing for social change.

WHAT:  Free World Usability Day Event, a Seminar sponsored by the Austin Chapter of the UPA and the Austin American Statesman

WHEN: Thursday, November 10th, 2011, 7:00PM – 9:00PM

WHERE: The Austin American Statesman, 305 S Congress Ave, Austin, TX 78704

WHY: World Usability Day was founded in 2005 as an initiative of the Usability Professionals’ Association to ensure that services and products important to human life are easier to access and simpler to use.  This year’s theme is “Education, Designing for Social Change” and is an opportunity for the community to learn more about making our world work better.

RSVP: SEATING IS LIMITED! Ensure you are able to attend this rare glimpse into the leading Journalism Social Media group. RSVP at EventBrite today!

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World Usability Day Hold the Date

Posted on October 24, 2011 by Craig

World Usability Day Meeting is November 10th, 2011

Greetings!

We have some very exciting news for this year’s World Usability Day, which is Thursday, November 10th, 2011. Our Austin Chapter of the UPA, in partnership with the Austin American Statesman, will be hosting a free seminar:

Fires, Community, Education and Designing for Social Change – How the Austin American Statesman utilized Social Media to inform and educate a community during the fires of central Texas

Please hold the date and time!

Thursday, November 10th, 7PM

More information will be coming shortly about this truly rare opportunity to learn directly from the team in the Statesman how they used Social Media to inform Central Texans, and the world, about the fire disasters we recently experienced!

More details, including how to RSVP to this limited seating event, will be coming very soon.

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Interaction Designer Job Posting

Posted on October 17, 2011 by Craig

Interaction Designer Job from Mutual Mobile

Hi all,

Here’s a recent job opening for an interaction designer sent to us from our friends at Mutual Mobile.

Interaction Designer

Mutual Mobile is looking for the best and the brightest Interaction Designers to join our User Experience team. We practice user focused design and pride ourselves in having a creative environment practicing methods of Lean UX and other techniques to iterate efficiently. In order to achieve this, Interaction Designers are paired one to one with Visual Designers and sit co-located with developers to encourage collaboration and moments of inspiration. We are looking for Interaction Designers who want to surprise and delight users with their simple, creative, and innovative ideas.

Responsibilities:

Have a current knowledge of mobile best practices, including the Apple Human Interface Guidelines.

  • Have an understanding of Interaction Design principles and the ability to pick and choose from various techniques like wireframing, storyboarding and prototyping to provide valuable deliverables for communicating the user experience to clients and teammates.
  • Have an understanding and ability to execute various testing methods for pre-design research and in-design usability testing.

What we’re looking for:

  • You are an excellent written and verbal communicator who can present work clearly to clients, developers and other team members.
  • You are a problem solver who enjoys working on a variety of challenges who can stay self-managed under deadlines.
  • You intuitively understand what the end-user needs and can focus on converting that insight into designs that both the development and visual design teams can work with.
  • You have enough technical experience that you can comfortably express and react to the technical and user interface limits of mobile and touch interfaces.
  • You have a basic proficiency in Illustrator, and an advanced proficiency in a wireframing tool like OmniGraffle.

Please include any examples of mobile work that you have in your portfolio. Having an experience in mobile is not a firm requirement for applicants that have multiple years of industry experience.

Apply for this Mutual Mobile interaction designer job

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October Meeting Recap UX Tools

Posted on October 5, 2011 by Craig

Oct 2011 Austin UPA Chapter Meeting Recap: UX Tools

The attendees at the Austin UPA Meeting, October 2011, UX Tools

A packed room of UX fans sharing and learning about cool UX tools

Our October, 2011 Austin Chapter of the UPA meeting on UX Tools was a hit! Over 20 fellow UX-fans shared and learned about many free and low-cost tools. Some of the very cool usability and IA tools demonstrated included:

UserTesting.com – An easy to use and relatively low-cost ($39 per participant) way to gather unmoderated usability testing data.

Feng-GUI – A simulated or automated way to gather information about what objects on a screen may be capturing human attention. Displayed results include heatmaps, gaze plot, opacity and AOIs.

Five Second Test – A simple and fast tool for gathering feedback about a design. An image of a website is displayed for five seconds, then your participant is presented with questions you create. Also includes click-tracking and navigation flow testing tools.

Maqutta - An open source project originally started by IBM that enables WYSIWYG interface design in HTML5, all through the convenience of your browser.

Obsurvey - A simple and FREE, yet easy to use survey tool for gathering qualitative and quantitative feedback.

Qualtrics - Another powerful survey tool that includes additional features including; a research suite, a website intercept tool, and the ability to obtain panels.

PlainFrame - A fast and easy remote testing tool useful for gathering information architecture and navigation feedback, plus the ability to record each participant session, clicks and more.

TreeJack - Another useful tool for gathering information architecture and navigation feedback.  Includes the ability to upload navigation via excel.

IBM Information Architecture WorkBench – A very cool tool, and very powerful, for developing complex information architecture maps and task flows. I also think this could be a dream tool for developing detailed, yet easy to navigate Use Cases

FlairBuilder - Another in the wireframe to prototyping tools that is becoming more common. This includes a free viewer that enables fellow team-members to leave comments.

Cacoo - A handy online tool that enables quick visualizations of diagrams, work-flows and information architecture. Real-time collaboration is another useful feature for those with disperse teams.

Partial UX Tools List

The amazing thing is the above is just a partial list of the UX tools that our meeting attendees thought might be of interest, but there are plenty more! The past few years has seen an explosion in the types of usability, IA and wireframing tools that practitioners can use to create and share designs.

Based on the great interest and excitement our attendees expressed in this topic we will look forward to doing a follow-up meeting on UX tools sometime in early 2012. We hope to see you there!

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October Meeting: UX Tools Bring and Brag

Posted on September 21, 2011 by Craig

October Meeting: UX Tools Bring and Brag

Our October Austin UPA Chapter meeting promises to be a good one, because YOU are going to be the meeting! That’s right, YOU get to brag about what UX tools you use to help you with your projects!

The format is simple, we’ll all take turns bragging about tools that we use, and just like any good shopper knows; the cheaper and the easier-to-use, the better!

You’ll hear about such interesting tools as “TreeJack, FenGUI, 5 Second Test, UserTesting.com” and plenty more! Not seeing your favorite tool? No problem, just share yours with the rest of the attendees. We’ll have a computer and projector so you can share your favorite with your fellow UX-ers.

Free food and drinks! And even more good news, you’ll have FREE Food and Drinks, which are provided by the good folks (and our hosts for this event) Apogee Results, the Online Marketing Authority.

RSVP on FaceBook

WHAT: October Meeting – UX Tools Bring and Brag

WHEN: Tuesday, October 4th, 7PM

WHERE: 8701 N Mopac, 1st Floor Conference Room (Left through the front door, down the hallway and last door on your left)

WHY: This is a GREAT chance for you to network, learn about (and share) some useful, cheap and effective UX tools designed to make your life easier, and to have some FREE food and drinks.

We will look forward to seeing you there!

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