Expression around the Clock

nparker — Sun, 28 Oct 2007 13:07:00 GMT

It has taken me quite some time to get my summary post out for the Expression around the Clock event and part of this has been due to getting the material together to post. I am doing a wrap up on the event at the Usability Professionals Association meeting at the BNZ on Tuesday night so come along if you are interested in seeing more.

By a stroke of luck my car blew a head gasket (luck because I have insurance) and I have been catching the train to work for the last couple of weeks. During the walk I have been watching/ listening to the rest of the world's Expression around the Clock sessions (well at the least the ones that are in English) and during the train ride I have been editing together a bit of a Remix, come highlights package featuring some of my favorite bits.

There is an overwhelming amount of video and content at http://expressionevent.com, so here is my attempt to provide my highlight package! I apologise now that it is bias towards NZ and English content but you know what they say about context ;)

First of all thanks everyone for coming along and especially to August, Nas (who even invited me to do a remix of our session at the Zamdes group in Wellington), Isha, Che, Steve, Desna, Tash, Carlos, Paul, Ryan and Taryn for their participation at the Auckland event on the day. I have never seen so much verbatim on the feedback forms! Stef and Che were telling me that the content from the Auckland sessions dominated the next Shift staff meeting in Auckland!

Also quick thanks to Adele and Pamela from yMedia for supporting the event. I spoke at their UberSavvy event at Microsoft yesterday which was a lot of fun. I like what Pamela wrote on the yMedia site... "yes, microsoft apparently DO have a 'creative' department. and this conference really made me start to LOVE microsoft. like actually."

So without further ado the remix video is linked from the picture below (1hr 8 mins) enjoy...

During Nas and my session we showed a bit of footage from the Dysto media guys and I have done a separate post on that stuff here.

Also I have encoded some of my favourite sessions (had to include my own ;) as an audio file for you to listen to. I only got as far as making them into wmv but it should be easy to convert to mp3 for all you ipod lovers (I assume itunes does that for you when you drag the files in).

Canada - Bill Buxton - Design for the Wild: Sketching Experiences - Audio Download, Streamed Video
low res video

New Zealand - August de los Reyes - SuperEmotion: Making emotions work for you - Audio Download, Streamed Video
low res video

Milan - Richard Banks - Technology and trends for Homelife - Audio Download, Streamed Video

New Zealand - Panel Discussions - Merging Cultures - Audio Download, Streamed Video

Canada - Jon Lax - 1997 is Calling - They want their Workflow Back - Audio Download, Streamed Video

New Zealand - Me and Nas - Designing with Expression Blend - Audio Download, Streamed Video

Cairo - Panel Q&A - Audio Download, Streamed Video

Oh yeah and just for fun I uploaded to youtube a short piece pulling together a short remix of the conference (HUGE thanks to you Carrie)

Enjoy!

Also I thought I'd link to the short "interviews" that Isha and Taryn conducted throughout the Auckland event, these are being served off Silverlight Streaming, great work guys!

Steve and Che
Nas and Isha - Morning Tea
Muffins
Tash
Isha, Nigel and Nas post Event
August
Carlos
Desna
Sean
Chan
Student Partner
Outside Comment
Comment outside
Provoke comment

Expression Around the Clock 2 More Sleeps!

nparker — Tue, 02 Oct 2007 07:28:00 GMT

I am preparing my session for the event that I will be delivering with Nas. I met August at the Hilton yesterday and I am looking forward to walking through his presentation with him tomorrow morning.

The panel discussion is shaping up to be very interesting indeed (if the emails floating around the panelists are anything to go by).

Che wrote... (I hope he doesn't mind me sharing his words)...

"Let’s firstly agree that Design != Visual Design. Design is any human-led process for planning the creation of an artifact. Design is a much larger concept than Photoshoppin’.

Here’s a useful UX definition:

User Experience (abbreviated: UX) is the quality of experience a person has when interacting with a specific design. This can range from a specific artifact, such as a cup, toy or website, up to larger, integrated experiences such as a museum or an airport.

Source: www.UXnet.org

I think of what we do at Shift as UX Design – ideally it should activate all of the various facets of experience that Peter Morville identifies in his User Experience Honeycomb diagram:

http://semanticstudios.com/publications/semantics/000029.php

Memorise that diagram. Good user experiences are multi-faceted, and seek to maximize all of those facets, rather than treat them as a zero-sum game: “we had to choose between beautiful and usable”, etc.

Various practitioners tend to focus on specific facets of user experience design:

· User research: useful, usable, valuable, desirable

· Visual Designer: desirable, credible, valuable

· Interaction Designer: usable, desirable, accessible

· SEM specialist: findable, accessible

· Information Architect: usable, findable, accessible

Put them all together, and you’ll get he best of all outcomes.

In short: Design is the process by which we craft User Experience.

Design vs Art

How can something be simultaneously so boring and so controversial?

My definition for design above would encompass art. But people find it useful to categorise creative output into an artificial polarity between “design” and “art”.

This false dichotomy typically seeks to plumb differences in intention, the relationship between creator and viewer/user, issues of commerciality, or issues of utility.

That’s why the discussion is typically so frustrating. Design and art are not different, yet if you decide to choose a point of difference, you’re spoiled for choice!

My personal take:

· design’s focus should be extrinsic (users and clients); consequently its value can be measured against extrinsic factors.

· art’s focus should be intrinsic; it’s true value is difficult to measure against clear metrics.

The fact that we assign dollar values to art doesn’t invalidate the second statement; it just demonstrates our perverse ability to assign a dollar value to things as intangible as human life, carbon footprints or beauty."

We are almost sold out for Thursday's event but since there will be potentially some no shows there is still some room to register if you get in quick.

Remember also that you can follow along online.

Also if you haven't already you can sign up for the Expression Newsletter at http://www.expression-newsletter.com.

Nigel Parker's Outside Line : EATC

Expression around the Clock

Expression Around the Clock 2 More Sleeps!