Here's a recap of this week's IxDA Chicago event, "Social to Mobile!" We had a great turnout and a lively conversation, facilitated by Mike Wood of Motorola. In particular, discussions centered around the design challenges of having 4 different groups with vested interest in the mobile application design:
- The designers and manufacturers of the hardware and model-specific applications (such as calendars) - The creators of the operating system, who generally wants to develop something once and apply it across multiple phone models - The service provider (AT&T, Verizon, etc) - The developers of key sites and applications that want to be presented in the mobile interface, such as Facebook - and the resulting design challenges of moving a rich, broad web interface into a small interface used in a mobile context - balancing fidelity to the brand against efficiency of the UI "Thank you" to Motorola, in particular to Mike Wood and Joi Roberts, for hosting the event and providing food and drinks for the evening! In respect of Motorola's policies around confidentiality, we will not be posting a webstream of the event. If you were unable to join and would like to explore the topic further, please join us at the next Chicago event - an IxDA happy hour on December 10th - for more lively discussions with fellow interaction designers. Please see below for a job posting and several upcoming events. See you there - or in December! -------------------------------- JOB POSTING -------------------------------- User Experience Research Manager - Cars.com Tracking Code 1164 Help us learn about our users! Cars.com, a top-tier online destination for automobile shoppers and sellers, seeks an experienced and passionate User Experience Research Manager to continue to grow our user research practice. The User Experience Research Manager will collaborate closely with other user experience managers, product managers, marketing managers, editors, designers and front-end developers to design and conduct user research studies throughout the product cycle. The User Experience Research Manager will also be responsible for managing our in-house usability testing lab, including lab equipment, software, policies and procedures. This position will offer broad exposure across Cars.com and excellent advancement opportunities. In this role you will: * Continue to improve our research process for testing product changes and gathering user feedback throughout the product development lifecycle. * Advise and guide project teams in planning user research activities that inform and support product development; help teams determine best research methodology to use to meet business objectives. * Coordinate and execute all phases of usability testing performed in our in-house lab, including developing screeners, consent forms, test plans and interview guides and moderating usability lab sessions and managing lab setup. * Manage test recruiting, partnering with vendors to recruit external test candidates and navigating the business to recruit internal users when necessary. * Provide post-research analysis and top-line reports; make recommendations to project teams based on research findings. * Manage and administer site-wide feedback surveys; provide survey analysis and reports; make recommendations to key stakeholders. * Collaborate with our Marketing team on large-scale user research initiatives. * Help product teams plan and execute external user-research and usability tests with research vendors as needed. * Manage in-house usability lab, including hardware and software assets used for testing. * Make user-testing budget recommendations. * Be an advocate for user research early and often in the process. Required Skills * Experience planning and conducting different kinds of research, including heuristic evaluations, card sorts, mental models, persona development, paper prototypes, focus group moderation and usability tests. * Patience for long term research initiatives but the flexibility to do just-in-time guerilla-style research as well. * Must be highly organized and be able to juggle and lead multiple user-testing initiatives in varying stages simultaneously. * Willingness to 'get your hands dirty' managing all steps of the usability testing process. * Excellent written and oral communication skills; strong relationship-building skills * Experience presenting research findings and recommendations to all levels of stakeholders, including executive management. Required Experience * Bachelor's or Master's degree in Human Factors, Cognitive or Experimental Psychology, Cognitive Science, Anthropology, Information design or related field (or equivalent professional experience) required. * At least five years experience conducting and leading user research, applying a variety of research methodologies including usability testing, in a corporate or consulting environment. Direct experience managing an in-house testing lab and basic A/V knowledge a plus. Job Location Chicago, IL, US. Position Type Full-Time/Regular Cars.com Contact: Carrie Sawyer - [EMAIL PROTECTED] ------------------------------------------ EVENTS ------------------------------------------ *User Experience and Design - What's Microsoft Up To? **Chris Bernard, User Experience Evangelist at Microsoft *(Presentation, Discussion and Networking Event) Microsoft isn't a typically common company Web developers and designers think of when it comes to user experience, design and inspiration. But with the advent of the Ribbon in Office 2007, user experience focused platforms such at Silverlight, Windows Presentation Foundations and Surface and with recent introductions of new professional design tools Microsoft is quickly becoming a part of design conversation in major design communities, design education, design in the enterprise and in its work with some of the biggest and most influential design organizations in the world, including the likes of Adaptive Path, Frog Design and Schematic. Join Chris as he talks about how recent trends in design are shaping both Microsoft and design practice and get an introduction and overview of Microsoft's next general design tools and platforms and how they fit into an existing practice. When: Tuesday, November 18, 2008 from 5:30 to 8:00 (presentation begins at 6) Where: 500 W. Madison, 12th floor conference room, Chicago, IL 60661 (take escalator to the 3rd floor and show ID at concierge desk) Cost: FREE! RSVP: Please email [EMAIL PROTECTED]<http://mail.google.com/mail/?ui=2&view=js&name=js&ver=LMLtlgTYR0Q&am=X_MwtcT3ECEJFpSxaw>with names, titles, emails of attendees. You may also register at http://www.meetup.com/Chicago-Interactive-Design-Development/<../exchweb/bin/redir.asp?URL=http://www.meetup.com/Chicago-Interactive-Design-Development/>and you'll then be able to receive notification of our future presentations/discussions. --------------------------------- PhizzPop Design Challenge - Chicago Chicago Cultural Center 11/20/08 Tickets (free): http://tinyurl.com/5cnsng The PhizzPop Tour will stop in seven cities across the U.S. This is a design competition combined with a social gathering for top web professionals, brands, designers and developers. Watch the hottest agencies compete in an interactive design challenge in front of a panel of judges and YOU, the live audience. Join us to watch the top agency talent as they show us their Expression Studio and Silverlight skills. Competing teams in Chicago come from: Manifest Digital <http://www.manifestdigital.com/> Quilogy <http://www.quilogy.com/> Roundarch <http://www.roundarch.com/> Tanagram <http://www.tanagrampartners.com/> --------------------------------- Thinkering with Hardware - interaction design workshop Hosted by the IIT Institute of Design January 17th 2009 | 350 N LaSalle St, Chicago REGISTRATION: http://www.id.iit.edu/917/ Fees: $625, includes meals and hardware prototyping kit Overview This full-day workshop will help interaction designers learn to "thinker" through tinkering with physical computing artifacts. The idea is to bring together talented individuals from the realm of interaction design, introduce them to new concepts/artifacts in the realm of physical computing, and allow them to put the two together. Most importantly, it will be an opportunity for interaction designers to get their hands dirty with electronics, soldering, and wiring, and learn how to interface hardware artifacts with virtual interactions. Each participant will receive a customized interactive hardware kit to work with and take home. Format 9:00am-5:00pm, Saturday, January 17, 2009 The first half of the workshop will bring designers and programmers in teams which work together to solve short problems linking physical computing platforms, programming environments, and traditional interaction software such as Flash. Once the basic concepts of physical computing are covered, participants will work together to come up with the design of an interactive system based on the resources available at the workshop. Teams will then split once again into separate units that tackle independent aspects of the installation with the end goal of bringing these individual units into a cohesive whole. A possible outcome of the workshop (for example) could be an interactive game at the scale of a room which employs both physical sensory objects and virtual environments. The workshop will conclude with a demonstration and exhibition of the workshop installation at a public reception hosted by the Institute of Design. Faculty: Anijo Mathew Anijo Mathew is an Assistant Professor an the Institute of Design (ID) at Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT) in Chicago.Anijo Mathew's research interests include interactive (computer mediated) spaces, immersive/responsive environments, environmental behavior, and HCI in the design process. ________________________________________________________________ Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ....... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe ................ http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines ............ http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .................. http://www.ixda.org/help
