Hurry! UX Week 2007 is Filling Up Fast
UX Week is getting full! Our last several events sold out and it is happening again with UX Week 2007: Register now — seats are filling up fast.
Read Peter’s Interview of UX Week Speaker Jess McMullin
Jess McMullin, of nForm, will present Smoothing the Way: Designer as Facilitator on Day 1 of UX Week 2007. Peter Merholz spoke with Jess to better understand his approach to facilitation.
Peter Merholz [PM]: What do you mean when you say “The Designer as Facilitator”?
Jess McMullin [JM]: In our practice, the thing that has become a barrier for us in delivering successful projects is how our clients and the different stakeholders on a project work together. In the last couple years we have focused on saying, “How can we better work with a business in order to understand what they really need and to deliver a successful project?” The things that derail projects are much more around different people having competing priorities, really different understandings of what the project is trying to accomplish, different visions for the project, and a general lack of alignment between decision makers and important internal constituents in the organization. So the session at UX Week is about working with internal teams to overcome that set of competing viewpoints and get people moving in the same direction.
PM: I find this interesting because for a long time I’ve felt that one of the most significant roles of the user experience practitioner is as the facilitator. Oftentimes people think of designers as being the creators, the genius with the spark and the person who comes up with the ideas. But with our design methods, the process is best done by a larger team and the role of the user experience person in that is to facilitate a team working together. My question for you is, why, of all the roles on project teams, has facilitation seemed to locate itself within design or user experience?
JM: The reason that a designer ends up being the facilitator is because all those same skills that we’ve cultivated — in empathy, in listening, in observation, in synthesis, in actually creating tangible artifacts that people can reference and discuss — all of those same skills that we would use in a user-centered perspective, if we pivot 180 degrees and then look at the business and look at the team, we can use that same skill set and many of the same methods to facilitate a consensus and get people talking from their different frames of reference so that they can actually articulate what’s important to them.
— Read the rest of Peter’s interview of UX Week speaker Jess McMullin and register for UX Week 2007.
Jesse & Jeff Make E-consultancy’s Top 10 UX Gurus
Congratulations to Jesse James Garrett and founder/emeritus Jeffrey Veen for making E-consultancy.com’s world’s top 10 list of user experience gurus. E-consultancy.com asked respondents to name their favorite gurus in the user experience field and Adaptive Path came up aces. You too can join Jesse and Jeff’s cult followings.
UX Week 2007 Tackles RIAs & Agile Development Environments
UX Week 2007 tackles how rich internet applications (RIAs) and agile development environments challenge existing processes and tools. On the afternoon of Tuesday, August 12 we will look at different approaches to communication and collaboration within different types of environments.
Sessions on Tuesday afternoon will:
- Look closely at both the tools and processes needed to work effectively
- Provide a foundation in effective documentation techniques
- Explore prototyping methods
- Discuss the role of the designer in agile development environments
- Re-work Jesse’s Visual Vocabulary for use in RIA documentation
- Examine the use of patterns in documentation development
Tuesday afternoon will culminate in a lively discussion moderated by Dan Brown about the future of documentation: Beyond Wireframes.
Listen to Todd Wilkens’ MX San Francisco Talk
Todd Wilkens’ scintillating MX San Francisco presentation, The Transformative Power of Research is now available on IT Conversations. Feel free to check out all of Adaptive Path’s past presentations available on IT Conversations.
MX San Francisco sold out early, so be sure to register for MX East in Philadelphia, October 21-23, 2007.
Andrew Crow Hits Paydirt Again on 37signals
Andrew Crow hits paydirt with another post — this time on 37signals. Check out Andrew’s tips on using inline spreadsheets at Basecamp.
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