This seems to be a great opportunity for traditional design practitioners such as architects, visual , and industrial designers to learn about interaction design.

TorCHI is inviting people to a sneak peek of Ian Hooper and John Schrag’s Design Essentials for Non-Designers tutorial at the UPA conference in June. To help them prepare for the event, they are inviting the local UX and HCI community to come in and participate, at no cost, to do a "dry-run" of the tutorial in Toronto on Friday, May 23rd.

Benefit to you: You can be in the tutorial without flying to Baltimore and paying an extra $500.

Drawback: The presenters might be a little unpolished Benefit to the presenters: They get to do a practice run and figure out what needs to be improved

Date: Friday, May 23, 2008

Time: 9:00am to 5:00pm

Location: Autodesk Toronto, 210 King Street East (at Sherbourne)

Title: Design Essentials for Non-Designers: Methods for Creating Innovative User Interfaces

This session is intended for practitioners who have come to interaction design from a research, psychology, information architecture, or other non-design background. It focuses on what happens after the requirements are done and before you build your first prototype. Design fields such as graphic arts, architecture, and industrial design have long-standing practices for innovative design, and these apply well to interaction design.

Participants are expected to have basic knowledge and skills in usability research and evaluation practices, including requirements gathering and conducting a usability test, as none of these topics will be covered. No design background or artistic skills of any kind are necessary, but you should be able to operate a pencil.

Participants in this tutorial will:

  • Learn how to adapt traditional innovation practices to the design of user interfaces.
  • Learn useful techniques to access their creativity, and to foster innovation during the design process.
  • Actively participate in an interaction design process that bridges the gaps between requirements gathering, usability testing, and design iteration.
  • Get a list of useful references and resources.

This tutorial does NOT cover:

  • Requirements gathering
  • HCI theory (when to use which widgets, etc, based on cognitive psychology)
  • Art skills
  • How to conduct a usability test

If you would like to participate, please send John an email at <John.Schrag@autodesk.com>. A limited number of places will be available.