1 post tagged “usability week”

A few weeks ago, I went to NNGroup's Usability Week in San Francisco to see Tog talk on interaction design courtesy of the company I work for.  Although I can't say that any of it was groundbreaking, there were a handful of tidbits that were useful.

I've attended quite of few usability conferences over the last 5 years or so.  There's a certain point where critical mass is obtained and there isn't much more to teach or learn other than to have affirmation that the masters are doing pretty much the same thing.  There's also a certain point where I learned that regardless of which organization is hosting the conference, they're pretty much teaching similar things -- the difference seems to be nomenclature.

I went to learn from the master himself (I had already seen the other masters, Jakob Neilsen and Jared Spool on a handful of other occasions), Tog, hoping to have him impart a pearl or two of wisdom.  While most of the presentation rested in tried and true techniques, what really caught my attention was a section dealing with the psychological differences between people creating applications or web pages (regardless of being a coder or designer), the personality types are strong on understanding abstract concepts and associating those concepts to coding or design. The problem is that assembling abstract concepts into user interfaces and usability web pages and applications can be a daunting task of there's a lack of understanding that people using the interfaces may not have the same internal ability to convert abstract concepts and unfamiliar taxonomies to action by finding and using stuff.

That talk reminded me of a handful of sections in O'Reilly's Mind Hacks... a great, umm, read (if you can call it that... it's pretty dense) but much more concise.

Although the course was called Interaction Design, it should have really be called Fundamentals of Interaction Design.  Tog was a great presenter, a lot of his stories were great, but I had expected more for the 3 days...

The event was held at the Mark Hopkins, a great hotel on Nob Hill in San Francisco.  I didn't stay there, but for those that did, it seemed the cost of everything was starting to wear everyone down.  Everything on Nob Hill was incredibly expensive.  For the folks that I ended spending time with, the cheapest meal (a relief to all) was when we went down to Lefty O'Doul's -- at $10 with a $5 Smithick's, it was cheaper than lunch.