Entries tagged: conference

Article  |  UX

3 Google I/O 2013 technologies that I'm super interested in, but will probably never use

28 May 2013

So, I didn’t technically attend Google I/O 2013, this year’s iteration of the company’s developer conference; I didn’t receive a free Chromebook Pixel and I definitely didn’t sit through the 3.5-hour keynote. But I did watch a bunch of the session videos when I was likely supposed to be doing something else, like laundry or, you know, working. There were hundreds of talks over the course of the 3 days, with topics including Android, Chrome & Apps, Maps, and YouTube, and the majority of them are posted on the Google Developers YouTube channel. In comparison to last year’s flashy introductions (Google Glass, a new Android OS, the Nexus 7 tablet), the 2013 I/O was less relevant to the typical consumer. But I found this year’s focus on developers and their tools quite interesting; in particular, there were a few announcements that really caught my attention.

Continue Reading

Article  |  UX

The Best Parts of An Event Apart Seattle 2013

10 Apr 2013

Last week, Brian and I sat with our peers in rapt attention at the Seattle occurrence of An Event Apart, the inspiring one-track web conference started by Jeffrey Zeldman and Eric Meyer in 2005. Known as “the design conference for people who make websites,” AEA is a particularly acclaimed web conference for good reason. Zeldman and Meyer, visionaries famous for helping shape the web as we know it, gather a dozen of the web’s most influential creators and gifted presenters to share their thoughts, inquiries, and discoveries with the several hundred fortunate attendees.

Since you were too busy vacuuming and/or getting your tires rotated to attend, I’ve summarized the best parts. Enjoy!

Continue Reading

Article  |  UX

What I learned at UX Bootcamp

14 Aug 2012


At the beginning of this month, I was fortunate enough to attend the Cooper UX Boot Camp. What is unique about this course is that Cooper partners with a non-profit to identify a need they have and, in turn, give the class a real-world problem to work towards resolving. In the end, teams may “compete” for the best idea, but everyone walks away with a clearer idea of the process and the chosen non-profit walks away with all of the ideas AND a donation in the name of the winning team.

Continue Reading

Article  |  UX

14 Things I Learned at WebVisions - Day 1

23 May 2012

I visited sunny Portland, Oregon (I’ve lived here for 7 years but let’s pretend, shall we) to attend this year’s WebVisions conference. Did you know that Portland has over 400 days of sunshine per year? Don’t attempt to do the math- it’s complicated. To extrapolate from my WebVisions experience, I’ve determined that Portlandites predominantly use MacBooks, are all men, wear ill-fitting trousers, and smell kinda funny. Besides that, I’ve compiled a list of 14 THINGS I LEARNED AT WEBVISIONS, the first half of which are presented here in no particular order. Enjoy!

Convention Center hall

Continue Reading

Article  |  UX

WebVisions 2011

1 Jun 2011

Allison, Brian, and I attended WebVisions in Portland, OR on May 26-27. It was a great event, and I appreciated that time limits for speakers were mostly set at 15-30 minutes. This made for a more energetic conference than most, and speakers needed to get to the point quickly or risk not getting time to make one at all.

I attended as many design related presentations as I could, and this year the talk in web design has shifted from visual design to emotional and interaction design. What makes a user return? What excites them? How can you guide them through your site? Having a pleasing visual design isn’t a big deal anymore, because now that’s just expected.

Continue Reading

Have a project that needs help?