September 30, 2005
Conference hotel room availability
This week, a rush on rooms reserved for DUX 2005 conference attendees at the conference hotel resulted in some people having difficulty securing a room at the conference rate.
In response, we have increased the size of the block of rooms reserved for conference attendees.
The conference rate for rooms in the conference hotel -- the historic waterfront Argonaut Hotel -- is available from 2 to 5 November. This rate is valid on extended dates of 31 October, 1 November, and 6-8 November based on availability only. The reservation cutoff date is 3 October, but, unfortunately, we cannot guarantee that rooms at the conference rate will remain available until then.
See the conference website for more information on securing reservations at the Argonaut at the conference rate.
Posted by richard.anderson at 08:03 AM | Comments (0)
September 28, 2005
Edward Tenner to close DUX 2005
As referenced on the conference website, Dr. Edward Tenner -- acclaimed writer, speaker, consultant, on technology, culture, and the history thereof -- will be the featured speaker of the closing plenary session of DUX 2005.
Clark Dodsworth, DUX 2005 Program Co-Chair, shares the best links he has found on Edward Tenner:
His home page, with a great deal of info, several interviews, his books, and a bio at the bottom: http://www.edwardtenner.com/A good educational technology website with two Dr. Tenner articles, a review of his book, "Why Things Bite Back," and links to both that book and his other, more recent book, "Our Own Devices: The Past and Future of Body Technology": http://www.edtechnot.com/nottenner.html
David Gergen, editor of "U.S. News & World Report," interviews Dr. Tenner on MacNeil/Lehrer News Hour: http://www.pbs.org/newshour/gergen/september96/bite_9-5.html
Excerpt from "Our Own Devices": http://www.wnyc.org/books/17968
Article by Dr. Tenner in the Washington Post, August, 2003": http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename=article&node=&contentId=A34960-2003Aug23¬Found=true
Letter at Slate by Tenner regarding Malcolm Gladwell's book, "The Tipping Point": http://slate.msn.com/id/2000154/entry/1004849/
Excellent quote from Dr. Tenner's column in Technology Review: http://aaronland.info/weblog/2001/11/28/3667/
Review of "Our Own Devices" in the Boston Review, by Carl Elliott, Visiting Associate Professor at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton: http://www.bostonreview.net/BR28.5/elliott.html
We are delighted that Edward has agreed to close our 2005 conference.
Posted by richard.anderson at 08:23 AM | Comments (0)
September 27, 2005
Studio tours
The DUX 2005 Studio Tours will showcase the rich diversity of practices in San Francisco. Fifteen studios will be featured, all leaders in a number of fields relating to user experience. Visits will combine guided office tours, demos, and presentations, and will give attendees the chance to mingle in an informal atmosphere with talented peers from a broad range of professional backgrounds.
Studios will tell the story of how they have evolved as practices, and how their philosophy, culture, and blending of disciplines shape their unique approach. They will share their expertise on designing for a broad range of experiences including graphics and animation, consumer products, environments and digital interaction. They will also focus on branding and strategy, touching on the way the practical business needs of clients shape their process from start to finish.
The DUX 2005 Studio Tours will take place on the opening day of the conference, and will feature the following studios:
- Adaptive Path
- Avenue A | Razorfish
- Center for the Book
- Cheskin
- Frog Design
- Fuseproject
- Gensler
- Hot Studio
- Lunar Design
- MetaDesign
- Method
- ODA/SF (official design agency)
- Odopod
- Pentagram
- Smart Design
Details of the tours and instructions for signing up for them will appear on the conference website soon. Participation in the DUX 2005 Studio Tours is open only to those who register for the conference.
Posted by richard.anderson at 08:14 AM | Comments (0)
September 26, 2005
Brought to you by... (part I)
ACM SIGGRAPH, ACM SIGCHI, and AIGA have joined forces again to develop what has quickly become the premier conference for user experience practitioners.
However, DUX 2005 is being presented in cooperation with several other professional societies: IxDG, IIID, UPA, STC, AIS SIGHCI, HFES, IDSA, and IAI. Plus, BayDUX, the local presence of UXnet in the San Francisco Bay Area, is sponsoring the conference's opening plenary reception, in part in honor of World Usability Day which was scheduled to coincide with the opening day of the conference.
As an expression of our thanks, members of these cooperating organizations are welcome to register for DUX 2005 at the same rates reserved for members of AIGA, SIGGRAPH, and SIGCHI.
Posted by richard.anderson at 04:58 PM | Comments (0)
Tutorial availability
One of the six DUX 2005 tutorials is already a sellout. If you had intended to take Marc Rettig's tutorial on The Layers of Experience but had not yet registered for it, you are welcome to send email to the registration chair to add your name to the waiting list just in case one or more of those registered need to cancel.
The five tutorials with seats still available:
Whose Line is it Anyway: Innovation, Ethnography, and Improv. Steve Portigal returns to the DUX conference to help you experience how improv can guide participant-observer research and support the co-creation of ideas.The ROI of User Experience: Measurement and the Context of UX Practice. Janice Fraser provides guidance on measuring the value of Web design and on optimizing your business processes and organizational structure to better leverage your Web site.
Designing for Service. Shelley Evenson instructs on understanding the service experience and on developing service concepts and experience prototypes.
Methodology of Visualization. Mark Baskinger introduces methods of sketching, mark-making, and diagramming that enhance the creative process by presenting immediate visual responses to ideas.
Designing Story. Brian Lanahan & Gary Hirsch teach the fundamental principles of stories and how these principles can guide work on brand identity, design, and user experience.
Registration for DUX 2005 tutorials is open only to those who register for the conference. We encourage you to register soon to reserve your seat in your tutorial of preferance. Fees for tutorials rise after October 1.
Posted by richard.anderson at 10:56 AM | Comments (0)
September 24, 2005
Bill Irwin to open DUX 2005
As referenced on the conference website, Bill Irwin has achieved many external honors (Guggenheim, MacArthur, Pew Charitable Trusts grant, Clown Hall of Fame) that recognize his accomplishments and support his work in theater. We are thrilled that he has agreed to open our 2005 conference, because he will open or extend our conversations on several important themes:
* physical intelligence
As a clown, mime, and actor, Bill Irwin has demonstrated that he excels in physical intelligence. He is expressive through every gesture - the glance, the grimace, the angle of the body, a step - as well as rhythm and pacing. So much of human-human communication depends on these gestures, and yet in digital communication many of these aspects are ignored, disguised, or lost. We look to Bill Irwin to acknowledge the physical dimension. That same physical dimension of our devices should not now be thought of as separate from screen interaction design... or, ideally, from the unique workflow of a given user. Mutability of function, display, and device to best serve the user is now a rational though difficult goal. Mr. Irwin and performers of his caliber do such blending of channels as a matter of course. We believe there's much for designers of digital experience to learn from his multiple performance disciplines.
* the role of emotion in interaction - and human experience
What is expressed through gesture? Usually, a great amount with little effort. Often it's the emotional content of the message. The ability to reveal and disguise emotion consciously is a hallmark of great acting, and likewise an aspect of human expression which our digital tools have severely limited abilities to convey. We look to Bill Irwin to evoke the emotional dimension. In addition to the emotional channel, the powerfully compact messaging that gesture can deliver are eventually going to be tools for digital designers. Projects like "Put That There" at the Media Lab in 1982 are closer to reasonable implementation today, and Bill Irwin's insights can help as we move forward.
* improvisation
Many interaction designers have come to understand the importance of spontaneity and improvisation in their own abilities to collaborate on interdisciplinary teams. Further, predictive capabilities of digital tools enable them to appear more spontaneous and, in the fullness of time, grow to personalize themselves to the user in non-maddening ways. We look to Bill Irwin to gain insight into improv.
* interplay between audience and performer
Live performance - in contrast to film, video and other recorded formats - allows the player to read the audience and instantaneously adjust various dimensions of a show in order to bring the audience to the essential message of the work. As a master of timing and physicality, Bill Irwin understands how to move an audience. We look to him to reveal how to manage, extend, and assist the audience's experience, whether that audience is one or 1,000, whether they're interested in entertainment, work, or active exploration.
We look to Bill Irwin - mime, clown, actor, director, choreographer, playwright, dancer, comic (and live action model for the title character in Stuart Little) to help us reclaim the full spectrum of human behavior by recognizing the physical, emotional, spontaneous, and managed interaction in communicating with our colleagues and our tools. The fact that he's a self-described "computer illiterate" makes him even more appealing, since he stands on the shoulders of 10,000 years of experience in the skills of live performance, little tainted by all our assumptions about digital experiences and mediation through machinery.
Posted by richard.anderson at 08:52 AM | Comments (0)
September 21, 2005
The case for case studies (and DUX 2005)
The importance of case studies to user experience practitioners has received increased emphasis in recent years. For example, Dennis Wixon, ACM SIGCHI's Vice President for Conferences, argued in the July+August 2003 issue of interactions that the research literature largely fails the practitioner:
"If our discipline is serious about public discussion of methods as they are applied in industry, we will move to ... a broad-based case study approach, examining outcomes that are relevant to both practice and business. Our relevance as a discipline and our career success as practitioners depend on such a change."
AIGA's Experience Design community of practice was an early advocate of case studies, spearheading the development of a freely accessible, online case study archive, and teaming with SIGCHI for a 2002 case-study-oriented 2-day forum.
The current editors of interactions, both instrumental in making the case for case studies in recent years, say more in the July+August 2005 issue:
"Case studies are important; they're readable, they're engaging, they reflect on the same issues you do, and sometimes they present an approach that is so gloriously and confoundedly obvious you'll wonder why you didn't think of that. They also emphasize best practices. But don't take our word for it. Nancy Frishberg, one of the DUX 2005 program chairs said recently about case studies:'The case study format encourages more interplay between the images and words, because of the extended length (compared with some other conferences including CHI). It also helps remind practitioners that learnings from projects are worth recording and sharing whether they count those projects as unvarnished successes or not.'...The good news is there is an excellent conference where practitioners share best practices: DUX 2005 (www.dux2005.org). We encourage all practitioners to consider attending DUX 2005 at Fort Mason in San Francisco this November. The program consists of Design Case Studies, Design Practice Studies (less focus on evidence, more on process), Design Research Studies (evidence through research that provide guidance or prediction of results), and Sketches (work in progress)."
As mentioned in an earlier blog entry, DUX 2005 will feature approximately 60 agency, industry and academic case studies, research studies, practice studies, sketches and posters, from diverse cultural geographies, spanning a broad range of design exploration. So, if you are a user experience practitioner, give serious thought to spending your 3-5 November 2005 at the Fort Mason Center in San Francisco. (And register soon.)
Posted by richard.anderson at 01:37 PM | Comments (0)
September 18, 2005
Early registration rates through October 1
Register soon, as registration rates increase after October 1 (and we do expect a sellout).
Posted by richard.anderson at 09:17 PM | Comments (0)
Conference highlights
More and more details about the program for DUX 2005 have been appearing recently on the conference website. And more are still to come.
Highlights of the three day conference, including some yet to make it onto the website:
- Studio Tours -- a packed day for attendees who take a self-guided visit to San Francisco's premier design studios;
- Tutorials -- half- and full-day sessions on powerful research and design methodologies;
- Special Events -- outstanding opening and closing plenary sessions, along with an invited panel of of design luminaries, festive receptions, book signings, and exhibit activities. (An exciting evening on Thursday, Nov. 3rd will feature 2005 Tony Award-winning actor and MacArthur Award recipient Bill Irwin, comedian and performer Heather Gold, interactive artist J.Walt Adamczyk, and special recognition of World Usability Day. The closing plenary on Saturday, Nov. 5th will offer a unique talk from award winning author and consultant Edward Tenner.)
- Conference Sessions -- a packed program of ~60 agency, industry and academic case studies, research studies, practice studies, sketches and posters, from diverse cultural geographies, spanning a broad range of design exploration. (Unique topics for this year include the e-commerce of diamond buying, context-aware mobile computing, responsive work and home environments, personalized information filtering, and effective means of bridging cultures.)
We'll provide more information about much of the above in upcoming blog entries. But of course, more information can also be found on the conference website.
Posted by richard.anderson at 09:01 PM | Comments (0)
Welcome
Welcome to the Designing for User eXperience (DUX) 2005 blog.
We shall use this blog to keep you abreast of developments over the final weeks leading up to the 3-5 November conference. We will also:
- fill you in on assorted background information (e.g., why the conference is being held at the Fort Mason Center in San Francisco),
- provide more information about the conference than outlined on the conference website (e.g., what you can expect to happen during select conference sessions),
- provide you with important reminders (e.g., the cutoff date for taking advantage of early registration rates),
- provide tips to those who attend the conference (e.g., good ways to get to Fort Mason from the conference hotel),
- and much more.
And we'll keep the blog active for some time following the conference.
In case you found your way to this blog directly rather than via the conference website: you'll find the conference website at www.dux2005.org.
Posted by richard.anderson at 07:42 PM | Comments (0)