Humanity-Centered Design: IDEO's Aaron Sklar Speaks About How and Why....

IDEO's Aaron Sklar speaks about the process of human-centered design and how it can be applied to solving the 'important' problems of the world...

He is speaking in the SoCap09 conference Sept 1-3 09 in San Francisco, which you should attend if you can...unfortunately I will be out of town. Ironically, doing user research for my current user-centric project!

This video really got me thinking about how to apply the methodologies I use every day in my work as an interaction designer to do something more...how shall I say...'important' for other humans out there. You will definitely hear me using the term, "humanity-centererd design" from now on!

Usability Week 2009 Conference in Berlin Nov 15-20

A great opportunity to learn more about usability and user-centered design, or to get inspired for your current project.

It's too late for the Sydney one but there's still:

Edinburgh
Sep 14-18

Las Vegas
Oct 11-17

Berlin
Nov 15-20

I'm going to try to aim for the one in Berlin. I can't believe it's been 20 years since the fall of the wall, I remember that day so clearly!

http://www.nngroup.com/events/

Waterfall vs. Agile Development

As a user experience architect, I'm nervous about going into my next project using Scrum. I've done it before and unfortunately came out of it feeling like Agile development was an excuse for the programmers to get to skip the design and research phase of a project and jump straight into development. It makes my job harder as a user experience architect because I can't do wireframes and I have to work with user stories when the conceptual framework doesn't feel stable yet. Like deciding how many wheels your vehicle is going to have before you've even decided if it's a car, train, or bike. Or maybe you'll just walk.

As someone who designs interfaces for a living, I am not sure I like the idea of programmers getting started without having a wireframe to work off of. Still, I'm willing to try. At least I'm being involved early in writing the user stories for this particular project, so I feel like I have some control over the experience...perhaps i'll write some that are like, "as a user experience designer, I am consulted throughout the process so that the website doesn't launch until I think the design makes sense and works well" !! Just kidding.

Anyway, I found a presentation by Maria Giudice of Hot Studio that I really enjoyed. It shows a diagram of what I think is a happy compromise: using the waterfall method first and then agile closer to the development phase.

Human-centered design meets Agile Development

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: user-centered ucd)

User Experience Consulting Firm: Hydrant

I think it's a great sign that User Experience consulting firms are popping up all over the place; it seems like businesses are finally realizing that the experience they create for their customers determines whether they buy their products or not.

Hydrant SF is a customer experience consulting firm I just came into contact with. They sound great, very professional, and have a great client list as well as years of experience.

check them out at hydrantsf.com >

I think they describe very well the problem we User Experience Designers are trying to solve:
"Customers are constantly interacting with your company. On the Web, through catalogs and call centers, via automated phone systems, with your physical products, through your services, or in your stores.

Each of these interactions is a piece of the customer experience that IS your company.

Who owns that overall customer experience in your organization? Is it any good? Where can it be improved? Most companies have no idea. "