Attended "Advantage IT" Conference & Exhibition

Attended "Advantage IT" Conference & Exhibition at Hyderabad International Convention Centre (HICC) on 1-2nd march 2011. The two-day summit is organized by Information Technology and Communications Department of the state government, the IT and ITES Industry Association of AndhraPradesh (ITsAP) and the Software Technology Parks of India (STPI). Over 1,500 delegates has taken part in the event, with over 200 companies showcasing their innovative products and solutions designed / developed in Andhra Pradesh.

Our SumTotal has won a booth space and we had our presence in exhibition & conference. I was representing SumTotal at our booth along with our team at this event. There was a product Showcase and Awards track where many companies including us have showcased a host of products innovated and developed in AP. Attending this products award showcase gave me good idea & impression of how other company products in various domains are competing and focusing on their product user experiences.

In short, I had a wonderful time networking with new people & many of my friends . This has given me a great opportunity to learn new things by looking at different products of various companies / domains. One of my friends Mr.Naidu (CEO) – Mera Events was part of organizing committee and they have done a great job managing this event very effectively. I think this one of the best, biggest & most successful event held in Hyderabad in recent times.

Attended UPA International Conference 2010 @ Munich, Germany.

Embracing Cultural Diversity – User Experience Design for the World

RANZ @ Usability Professionals Conference 2010 - Munich, Germany

Attended UPA international conference at Munich, Germany. Last year I had plan to attend UPA conference at Portland but could not make it. This year, I am impressed with the theme of the conference “Embracing Cultural Diversity – User Experience Design for the World”.  and decided to have my presence. While doing the registration, I was in a small confusion weather to attend UPA Conference (or) UX London Conference (stars bashing on my head!!!) . I spoke to my buddy UX pros and Finlay decided to attend this.

For the first time in its history, the Usability Professionals’ Association International Conference will travel to the heart of Europe. The key theme focused on how UX professionals can create great user experiences across different cultures, meeting the challenges of delivering to diverse audience.

The international UPA conference was hosted in Munich, Germany, and provided a great opportunity to meet and network and to share ideas, visions and innovation strategies across cultures and across countries. There were more than 800+UX professionals from more than 50 countries.

Tutorials and workshops on 24th Monday and 25th Tuesday, then two and a half days packed with presentations, Idea Markets, and opportunities to network with other user experience professionals. Workshops and Tutorials begin on Monday, May 24, and regular conference sessions begin on Wednesday, May 26 at Munich, Germany at the Bayerischer Hof Hotel.

I have reached to Munich via Frankfurt by Lufthansa airline on 25th June. I used to wonder is this city called "Munich" or "Munchan" but both are the same. Stayed at Intercity Hotel which is at located at central Munich. The hotel was cool and very accessible and BTW free WIFI. Without internet we will end up nothing in Europe :) Went to the conference hotel in the evening to just have a overview of the place, people, etc and done with the formal registration. After that i started exploring the Exhibition stalls in the conference.

The conference venue itself is very beautiful! It’s being held in the Hotel Bayerischer Hof and it’s one of the grandest and most expensive hotels in Munich. I did not stay in this hotel as this is very very expensive €250. The only WIFI available in the building costs €27 for 24 hours and could not afford to spend for Internet during conference breaks. You can make out lunch and dinner with that penny.

The lunch sessions were a great idea, rather than being a formal thing, you just head to a restaurant (which has a topic) and discuss. Unfortunately, we had about 50 people go to our restaurant, which resulted in bill chaos and a very slow lunch. There was also too many people so the leader couldn’t really lead the discussion (as he was on a different table) but I met some great people and I managed to get back to the conference in time. Sometimes, it’s just easier to let the venue sort out the catering, since they are equipped and used to dealing with big groups in a short time period. We had some great discussions on User experience and everyone sharing their practical experiences. One thing which i have realized that all the UX designers across the globe will have same set of problems. "Dev /QA Vs UX"

I really enjoyed the conference and made many international UX friends. Got an opportunity to meet more than 800+ UX professionals from 50 different countries. Happy to see some of my old friends from India and abroad. Jumki Iyyengar, Sameer Chabuskwar from India, Saud Sultan from Singapore, Daneil Suiz from Hongkong & on....!

The experience in Munich was awesome. Munich is a very beautiful city. I am really impressed with the architecture, roads, food and mainly public transport. Even i had a free ticket for tram / bus / metro, i just preferred walking across streets. Did not get much time to explore the city but after the conference ~7.00PM walked around the city with my gears and clicking photographs. Good thing is that climate was good and it was long day. Me, Saud and Tania (Ukrine friend) generally used to go around the city in the evenings and take some photographs. I know you all have missed this but don't worry..!!! I will be sharing you some great photographs & my experiences.

Did not done any shopping except some magnet Souvenirs, Pens & Beer mugs. I have a habit of collecting some fridge magnets from each place i visit and stick to my fridge... (its my dashboard ...lol!). Water is expensive than Beer. German Beer is famous in the world and tried tasting different Beers, even i don't have much habit of drinking.... just followed the Funda...."Be a ROMAN in ROME"!!! Finally... realized we should experience everything... that ithis world offers!! lol!

Trust me…if you are planning for UX conference don't miss UPA next year at least. If you get a chance try planning a trip to Munich, Germany for a vacation…Its awesome.!!!! I have taken lots of photographs in the conference and also in the city... to share with you all...enjoy!!!
Stay tuned... will be posting more details shortly...

Comparing UXD Business Models

This manifest need for UX leaders to learn—and share—best practices was the rationale for the authors, Jim Nieters and Garett Dworman, to write and present a CHI 2007 Experience Report on the organizational structure that Jim Nieters created for his UX group at Cisco

[1]. It also motivated us to follow up that presentation with a CHI 2007 Management Special Interest Group (SIG), “Comparing UXD Business Models,” in which participants compared different models of UX organizational design

[2]. Our intent was to share experiences and systematically explore them in the hope that this information will aid companies in structuring their internal UX functions. To this end, we generated SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats) analyses of four UX business models.

Visit: uxmatters to read the complete article

Attended User Experience Metrics workshop

Being Effective in HCI Work through User Experience Metrics by Anirudha Joshi at Hyderabad.
Anirudha Joshi is a faculty member in the Industrial Design Centre, IIT Bombay. He teaches and does research in the field of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) design. He has organized a tutorial on User Experience Metrics (Measuring User Experience) full day training. I have attended this in Hyderabad and it was a great learning. ~25 people were registered for this but we were hardly 10 people who have attended. That is only because it’s a "VALENTINES DAY" (Feb 14th).

During the course, we worked on hands-on sessions calculating some metrics for different products, defining UX goals, etc. We had lot interactive, Q&A, idea sharing, brainstorming, and discussed other UX related topics.

Anirudha finished a round of one-day tutorials on user experience metrics in Mumbai, Pune, Bangalore, Hyderabad and Chennai. These tutorials went off smoothly without exception every where. The user experience management (UXM) team of Satyam has provided the venue and local support in Pune, Bangalore,Hyderabad and Chennai.

Words to inspire user experience designers

Inspire UX - Great quotes!

“Good design, when it’s done well, becomes invisible. It’s only when it’s done poorly that we notice it.” - Jared Spool

“I’ve been amazed at how often those outside the discipline of design assume that what designers do is decoration—likely because so much bad design simply is decoration. Good design isn’t. Good design is problem solving.” - The Art & Science of Web Design by Jeffrey Veen

“For businesses to bottle the kind of experiences that rivet minds and run away with hearts, not just one time but over and over, they’ll need to do more than hire designers. They’ll need to be designers. They’ll need to think like designers, feel like designers, work like designers. The narrow-gauge mindset of the past is insufficient for today’s wicked problems. We can no longer play the music as written. Instead, we have to invent a whole new scale.” - Marty Neumeier

“When we blame the user, we teach them that technology is perfect and that the errors are their own. Because technology is hard to use, we are teaching a generation to be afraid of technology. We are teaching a generation to believe in their own stupidity… It’s not the user’s fault.” - Jono DiCarlo

“Most [clients] expect experience design to be a discrete activity, solving all their problems with a single functional specification or a single research study. It must be an ongoing effort, a process of continually learning about users, responding to their behaviors, and evolving the product or service.” - Dan Brown

“Don’t design for everyone. It’s impossible. All you end up doing is designing something that makes everyone unhappy.” - Leisa Reichelt

“If you want to reach the greatest number of users possible, it’s best to write clearly and simply and design your interfaces to be consistent from page to page. For some people, simple usability advice like this is an absolute accessibility need… And anyway, people of all abilities fail tasks that are confusing. Why should we all suffer an interface that proves itself to be unusable?” - Matt May

“Technological advances have always been driven more by a mind-set of ‘I can’ than ‘I should’… Technologists love to cram maximum functionality into their products. That’s ‘I can’ thinking, which is driven by peer competition and market forces… But this approach ignores the far more important question of how the consumer will actually use the device… focus on what we should be doing, not just what we can.” - John Maeda

“It’s always helpful to look outside of the web for your inspiration, to places where you might not at first expect to find a solution. The world is a collage of inspiration, from newspapers, magazine publishing, and advertising to product design, architecture and the fine arts.” - Andy

“Designing a website can be a bit like being a kid and inheriting a sweetshop. It’s easy to get carried away. There are so many choices. A website can be like an attic that never fills up. Space is not the problem. Attention is.” - Gerry McGovern

Missing IxDA - Interaction 09 conference

The Interaction Design Association (IxDA) 2nd annual conference will be held February 5-9th in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. IxDA 09 is being held in conjunction with Simon Fraser University’s School of Interactive Arts and Technology. Several hundred Interaction Designers from around the world will come together to address the design of various types of interactive systems: web and desktop applications, mobile, consumer electronics, digitally enhanced environments, and more.Interaction 09 will feature three days of inspirational and tactical sessions geared at anyone who practices Interaction Design, as well as a day of pre-conference workshops.Pre-Conference workshops are starting to fill up, but there is still space left.

Some of the invigorating sessions available include:
Well, we did all this research . . . now what?
So you want to be a hardware / software Interaction Designer . . .
Web Form Design
Designing and Building with Patterns and Pattern LibrariesOut of the many sessions this year, the ones I am looking forward to the most include:
Rapid Design Labs
Sketching haptic and multimodal interaction

Designing Natural Interfaces: Notes from the Multi-Touch, Multi-User Frontlines
Mission Critical Interaction DesignThe six keynote speakers this year are:
John Thackara
Genevieve Bell
Dan Saffer
Fiona Raby
Marc Reddig

Kim GoodwinInteraction 09 will be a great experience for any Interaction Designer to network, fine tune their skills, and have a great time. Prior to and during the conference, there is a social networking site attendees use to discuss events, outside activities, and lots more!

I am truly missing this.. best of luck you focks who are attending!

HCI- Upcomming Events in this Year

15-16 November 2007
CARS 2007, ChiCl Annual Research Symposium, Preston, UK.

22 November 2008
USAB 07, Usability & HCI for Medicine and Health Care, Graz, Austria.

26-28 November 2007
UCS 2007, International symposium on Ubiquitous Computing Systems, Tokyo, Japan.

29-30 November 2007
HAID 2007, 2nd international workshop on Haptic and Audio Interaction Design, Seoul, Korea.

30 November-2 December 2007
UMO 07, National conference on Designing for User Experience, Hyderabad, India.

6 December 2007
HCT 2007, 10th Human-Centered Technology postgraduate workshop, Sussex, UK.