Written by David Charney
Posted: March 12, 2009 (1 year, 4 months ago) | 0 comments
RIApalooza was big hit in Chicago last year and this Summer it is back. There were great presentations and great networking. Visit the website at www.RIApalooza.com and get signed up today. Early birds only pay $10 dollars.
Here is the info:
Following the overwhelming success of 2008’s RIApalooza, we are proud to announce RIApalooza 2!
Join your fellow RIA professionals for an invaluable unconference aimed at exploring and promoting the development of Rich Internet Applications.
RIApalooza promises a platform agnostic and “PowerPoint-Free” zone, which means we are going to forgo the boring marketing pitches in favor of talking technology. RIApalooza is about creating Rich Internet Applications; how to go about building them and what is being built.
Presentations and sessions will be begin at 9am on Friday, May 8th. A social meet-and-greet will immediately follow at 5PM.
The event will be held at the Illinois Technology Association, located at 200 S Wacker Drive 15th Floor Chicago, IL 60606.
Written by David Charney
Posted: October 15, 2008 (1 year, 9 months ago) | 1 comment
July 20th, 1969 - Man lands on the moon. October 15th, 2008 - Man creates bad ass image manipulation tool online. People amaze me. Seriously check out pixlr (www.pixlr.com). There are a few more of these Photoshop evil twins online that I need to check out. These are fantastic and really show the capabilities of Flash. Missing a few things (would love to be able to move layers around… but when they already have a clone stamp tool, I am sure movable layers are on their way). Throw this link in your favorites for the day you need to do a quick edit and Photoshop keeps giving you a scratch disk error for NO reason. Just kidding Photoshop… let’s never fight again.
Update: This link has several more: http://sixrevisions.com/tools/web-based-image-editors/
Written by David Charney
Posted: October 4, 2008 (1 year, 9 months ago) | 0 comments
Hey hey! CD2 just got an email from Steve Krug, the brilliance behind the book Don’t Make Me Think. Steve and Lou Rosenfeld have an upcoming usability workshop here in Chicago (October 17) and Washington, DC (November 12).
CD2 members can get a $150 dollar discount by registering at Steve’s site (sensible.com) using the discount code “cd2″.
From Steve’s site Advanced Common Sense:
In this day-long session, I’ll teach you how to do your own low-cost/no-cost testing that’s simple enough to make it a routine part of your design process.
The day will include
- A complete explanation of how I recommend doing testing (Hint: very simple, very fast, and very cheap)
- Two live usability tests on attendees’ sites, so you can see the whole process in detail
- A chance to practice conducting a test on your own site
- Advice on how to interpret your findings and decide what changes to make
- Plenty of time to answer your questions about testing or any other aspect of usability
Who should attend?
The short answer is “anyone involved in publishing a Web site.” Graphic designers, programmers, writers, editors, project managers, sole proprietors, and VPs can all benefit from this session.
Whether you already do testing and want to know more, or have never done testing and want to start, or even if you don’t ever intend to do your own testing but are responsible for hiring, managing, or paying other people to do it, this session will prove valuable.
Some of the topics covered
- What I mean by “discount” user testing, and why it always works
- How to get buy-in: Ways to deal with bosses, stakeholders, and check-signers
- What kind of people–and how many–to test (My motto: Recruit loosely, and grade on a curve)
- What to test, and when to test it
- How to record tests and use the recordings to your advantage
- The art of specifying test tasks
- How to facilitate–when to listen and when to probe
- Why I don’t use exit and entrance questions
- How to decide what to fix
- No more big honkin’ reports: Why you should avoid writing test reports, and what to do instead
- Remote testing methods and tools
- …and much more.
Written by David Charney
Posted: May 26, 2008 (2 years, 2 months ago) | 0 comments
Hey all. I am happy to announce cd2, the new Chicago Designers & Developers User Group.
cd2 is dedicated to bridging the gap between design & development to improve the user experience and user-centered design. Function meets design in this group as we focus on creativity as it relates to design and development processes and the collaboration between the two.
If you are interested, we ask that you visit our site at www.cd2ug.org and let us know what you would like to see in the group. We will be posting more information soon detailing the group and our first meeting.
Written by David Charney
Posted: April 13, 2008 (2 years, 3 months ago) | 3 comments
Could I please get a show of hands - who has ever sent an email and forgot to attach the coveted file that was the overall point of the email itself? Both of my hands are up. How am I typing with both hands up? Wild.
Anyway, as a business owner and developer, I know that looking competent to a prospect or client is very important and while forgetting to attach their proposal, a wireframe, a deliverable, or a picture of the cutest dog that you found on digg or reddit may seem like a small thing, it could put a little doubt in your abilities. So I have a suggestion. I tend to use Thunderbird and Google Mail so I am going to direct this idea towards those great developers of these apps because if Yahoo Mail or someone else does this it (selfishly) doesn’t do much for me. Your applications seem to do a million things when I hit that send button. They check to see if I have a subject written, they check my spelling, they in some cases check my type of attachment and then say Whoa! You can’t send an exe through our system fool!
I would like to see one more check when my email gets sent. I want you to look for the words “attached” and “attachment” (and whatever other brilliant words that do the job) and if the word be there and there be no attachment, pop-up one of those hilarious reminders that says “We noticed you used the words attachment but do not have any files attached. Would you like to attach a file?” Options: Hell yes. Hell no.
And of course, throw a check box in the setup so it can be an option. I would hate to piss off some guy named Wally Attachmenthousen. And thus concludes my user experience based rant of the day. You guys rock. Thanks for listening.
