1a - Information Visualization Crosses the Chasm
Dr. Ben Shneiderman

Information Visualization offers substantial potential for breakthroughs to higher human performance and creativity. This short talk presents successful commercial products that show this potential with suggestions for novel opportunities and for improved applications. Demonstrations include visual data mining for temporal, tree structured, and multi-dimensional data, with rapid exploration supported by dynamic query sliders. (This talk is an overview of the material presented in Ben's full-day seminar.)


1b - No Simple Answers: Trade-Offs in
User-Centered Design
Kevin Mullet

Anyone who has worked with published design guidelines knows they usually aren't very helpful on truly "wicked" design problems: Should you make your product easier to learn or more efficient to operate? Should you minimize the number of windows, or avoid overcrowding them? Do you need simple control panels or direct mappings to functions?

Guidelines alone can't provide the answers. By their very nature, guidelines often oversimplify the world to highlight a single desirable quality. But the world is full of desirable qualities, the value of which varies with the application domain, usage pattern, and individual user.

In contrast, when you recognize a trade-off and understand how it constrains the choices on each design dimension, you can see how different weightings are more or less desirable under different user and task profiles. This kind of strategic thinking empowers designers to optimize their designs to highlight a particular aspect of the user experience.

2a - Contextual Design: From Customer Data to Implementation
Karen Holtzblatt

Curious about customer-centered design ÷ what it is, and how to take advantage of it? Want to work with your users more effectively to design and iterate your systems? Want a feel for the techniques available, and how you might adopt them in your project? Come to this talk, given by acknowledged industry expert Karen Holtzblatt, and find out!


2b - Topic to be announced
Mitch McCasland

Lunch and Keynote Address:
Usability and the Holy Grail
Jared M. Spool

As designers, what is our quest? What, inevitably, are we striving for? What do we need to succeed at our quest? And what is the download time of an unladen swallow?

In this fascinating and entertaining keynote presentation, Jared will attempt to answer these questions (well, most of them). He'll look at the state-of-the-art of producing usable designs and talk about what we're missing ÷ what the big challenges are that face us if we are to succeed at finding our Holy Grail. Jared will talk about how we've gotten to where we are today and what the future holds for those of us looking to make the world free of frustration.

3a - Wireless Web: Breaking the Boundaries for Everyone
Mark Pearrow

Myth: accessibility is just for people with disabilities. Reality: Accessibility features directly affect the bottom line, and benefit every user, not just those with disabilities. This talk will focus on accessibility issues in the context of wireless/handheld computing devices. You'll get a topical overview of ways to implement accessibility features in your content that will make your content easier to access, without breaking the bank.


3b - Why Software Sucks: And How Good Design Methods Can Fix It
Kim Goodwin

Many of today's brightest, most talented professionals work in the software industry. Technology is driving our economy. Silicon Valley is creating new millionaires every day. So, why do people still hate computers, software, and other high-tech products? Why does technology make most people feel stupid?

The right kind of design starts with human needs and goals, which drive not only how the product looks and works, but what it does. It's not enough to build a product and apply graphic design or interface design on top of the code. The right people are interaction designers who can understand technology capabilities and work in partnership with developers, just as architects and builders work together. The right time for design is as early as possible, preferably before the feature list is even defined.

Kim will talk about how the current software development process is broken and how we can fix it by using design in the process. In this talk, Kim will make the case for why we need design and introduce the idea of using goals as a basis for guiding design; in the full-day seminar, she will discuss how to do design using Cooper's unique Goal-Directed¨ methods.

4a - The Seven Deadly Sins of International Design
Rolf Molich

When US-based sites go global, many aspects of the user experience get broken. This talk focuses on not only the obvious issues, such as address and date formats, but also on cultural issues. The talk is based on a large number of usability tests with users in Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Germany, England and Ireland.


4b - Patterns and Pathways: New Ways of Approaching Site Design
Peter Merholz and Jeffrey Veen

Successful websites continually evolve. Redesigning is expensive and time consuming. How can you hope to serve the needs of users effectively? The key is to designing sites while anticipating future change, with the goal of achieving maximum responsiveness to customer needs within an efficient development environment.

Join Adaptive Path's Jeffrey Veen and Peter Merholz as they share their research and experience in developing adaptable sites. Specifically, Jeffrey will discuss a pattern-based approach to Web site interface development, and Peter will present thoughts on dynamic information architecture that responds to user behavior. By the end, you'll have tools for improving your design processes immediately, as well as food for thought in addressing the increasing complexity of the sites we manage.

Conference Reception

Your Tuesday registration includes a ticket for one complimentary beverage; we'll provide snacks and a cash bar. Come mingle with new friends and old!