I Love User Experience

UPA 2008 - My Course Selections

Mon, 16 Jun 2008 19:21:20 -0800

After some thought and a few hard decisions, I'm ready to publish my course selections for the UPA 2008 International Conference.

Wednesday, June 18, 2008
8:30 AM - Opening Keynote: How Innovation Works
10:30 AM - Institutionalizing User Experience: A Consulting Challenge
1:30 PM - Visual Design and the User Experience: Keys to the Partnership
2:20 PM - How to Manage a User Experience Team (Without Losing Your Mind!)
3:30 PM - Subjective Ratings of Usability: Reliable or Ridiculous?

Thursday, June 19, 2008
8:30 AM - 10 Strategies for Negotiating The Politics of Holistic Design
1:30 AM - Teach Your Software Developers This Ideation-Design Process to Reduce Your Usability Work Downstream
2:10 PM - Rich Man's Problems: Beyond Selling Usability
2:50 PM - How to Break Consistency for Glory & Riches
4:00 PM - A Practitioner's Guide to the Modified-Delphi Card Sort
4:50 PM - The Pushed-RITE Method: A Hybrid Approach for Pushing Rapid Iterative Testing and Evaluation to its Practical Limits

Friday, June 20, 2008
8:30 AM - The Evil UI Designer: How to Really Confound and Annoy Your Users
10:30 AM - Closing Speaker: Ethnographic research: Bringing You Face-To-Face with Customers in Natural Environments

If you are in the same course as me, please take the time to say hello. I'd love to meet you or catch up again if I already know you.

UPA 2008 - Institutionalizing User Experience: A Consulting Challenge

Mon, 16 Jun 2008 19:04:57 -0800

I'll be co-presenting a talk at UPA 2008 in Baltimore, MD on Wednesday starting at 10:30 AM. If you are interested in learning more about how a usability consultancy partners with select usability "champions" in a Midwestern advertising agency and a Silicon Valley high-tech company to develop blended UX teams, this talk is for you. Drop by Essex "C" in the Marriott Baltimore Waterfront's conference center to check out this presentation live.

UPA 2008 - Tutorial T5 - The 3x3: A Unique Approach to Design Ideation

Mon, 16 Jun 2008 15:19:14 -0800

While attending the first of my pre-selected tutorials today I managed to capture some photographs of the participants in action. All of these photos are available as a photo set on flickr.com (my favorite photo sharing site). To see the pictures you can visit my photo stream at http://flickr.com/photos/gcochran/sets/72157605648149138/.

If you know the folks in the photographs, please drop me a quick e-mail and I'll update the titles and descriptions accordingly.

UPA 2008 - The Many Faces of User Experience

Thu, 15 May 2008 16:45:03 -0800

I'm taking a "vacation" and will be attending the Usability Professionals' Association 2008 International Conference in Baltimore, MD during the week of June 16 - 20. Will you be there? If so, please find me and say Hello! I'm always interested in meeting new people and catching up with old friends.

Google Page Ranked Number One!

Thu, 19 Jul 2007 01:11:01 -0800

My recent blog post that discusses a design oversite on Apple.com and the impact on color blind users was page ranked number one on Google.com today. I'm very excited and pleased to share this news with the rest of the world. For me, this is literally a first.

See for yourself. Enter "iphone color blind" into the search box on the Google.com home page, then click Search. The result set should look something like this:

Achieving number one out of over 1.8 million pages to choose from is pretty cool indeed.

iPhone Available: Except To Color Blind Users

Tue, 03 Jul 2007 21:33:05 -0800

As you might expect, the design team at VMware was pretty excited about the release of Apple's new iPhone product. As such, several of us stood in line on launch day to purchase the device. Other members of the team, however, decided to wait a bit longer, to scrutinize the UI design a bit closer, and to make a more informed decision about purchasing the iPhone.

Once the devices were in hand everyone was focused on which way the phone could be rotated and how the user interface responds or on how well the iPhone discovers WiFi networks and connects to them, for example. One item none of us initially considered was the UI design of Apple's web site supporting the iPhone launch.

As it turns out, Apple's web site violates a very basic design guidline in practice today.

iPhone Activated: Working Well...

Fri, 29 Jun 2007 21:30:26 -0800

Perhaps my last post was a bit premature. Only about an hour after my last post and now my new iPhone is activated and working well. Thanks AT&T! Apparently the system had a little trouble at first and once the super smart IT guy on the backend kicked the server the problem seems to have been rectified.

The activation process in iTunes is a bit lacking in features, however, even that didn't matter. I was initially assigned a phone number in my home area code of 650 and when I called AT&T to request a 408 number instead they instantly changed it over. All I had to do was turn the phone off and back on again and it worked perfectly after starting back up almost instantly.

As I learn to use the device I'll be posting more updates. For now, I'm happy and things seem to be working well.

iPhone, Therefore iWait!

Fri, 29 Jun 2007 20:32:08 -0800

We'll, I managed to pick up my new iPhone this evening at the Apple store at the Stanford Shopping Center and the whole experience was completely uneventful. I jumped into the shorter-than-expected line at 7:16 PM and had the device in my hot little hand by 7:57 PM. Well done Apple! Now, for the big bummer; I'm still waiting on AT&T to activate my device.

Announcing: French Insurance Services

Fri, 22 Jun 2007 21:38:16 -0800

A good friend of mine from my days working at Blue Martini Software has decided to make a go of it in the insurance business. He is a wonderful person that is honest and sincere and is deserving of your business. If you find yourself in need of auto, home, life, retirement, or small business insurance you should definitely give him a call.

Wise Man: Thomas Edison

Fri, 22 Jun 2007 21:31:19 -0800

As it turns out, Thomas Edison was truly a very wise man. You know this already you say? Well, I just wanted to share one of my favorite Edison quotes.

"Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work."

How true is that? We should all remember that with hard work comes great reward. Now...get back to it!

Shopping for New CDs

Sun, 15 Apr 2007 19:16:40 -0800

Today I took a trip down to San Jose to visit Rasputin...the most amazing music store on the planet now that Tower Records has closed all their retail locations. I picked some pretty cool CDs so I thought I'd list them here for you to check out. Here they are:

My Favorite Books - The Complete List

Sat, 07 Apr 2007 08:44:31 -0800

I've been asked more than once now to compile and publish a list of my favorite books on design. This entry contains the ones I could think of off the top of my head. I plan to create a downloadable version of the list in PDF format soon so check back with me later for that.

San Francisco UE Jobs

Tue, 03 Apr 2007 19:23:10 -0800

Company: VMware, Inc.
Titles: Interaction Designer, Visual Designer, and User Researcher
Location: San Francisco, CA

My team at VMware is expanding to a new location in San Francisco. I am looking for bright, passionate people interested in designing solutions to real world problems that are easy-to-use. I have positions available in interaction design, visual design, and user research.

CHI 2007 - My Course Selections

Tue, 20 Mar 2007 10:15:00 -0800

My registration for CHI 2007 is now complete! Here are the specific courses I'll be attending this year.

Course #9 - How to Collect Field Data and Produce a Tested Design in 1-8 Weeks
Course #20 - Building Affinity Diagrams to Reveal User Needs and Engage Developers
Course #29 - How to Build Rich Personas from Field Data
Course #36 - Interaction Design Studio

If you are in the same course as me, please take the time to say hello. I'd love to meet you!

CHI 2007 - VMware Hospitality/Recruiting Event

Wed, 14 Feb 2007 18:00:18 -0800

My team and I at VMware have decided to host a special hospitality and recruiting event for select CHI 2007 attendees. We are holding this exclusive event at the Sainte Claire Hotel in downtown San Jose during the conference itself. Since the event is by invitation only you'll need to request a spot if you'd like to attend.