Chris Fowler of Pixar Opens Saturday, October 19th
Chris Fowler is your opening speaker on Saturday, October 20th at Big Design Conference 2013. Born in Beaumont, Texas, Chris is a graduate of The Art Institute of Dallas where he studied Computer Animation/MultiMedia. Starting his career as a generalist in Computer Graphics, Chris ended up specializing in Lighting after his first film opportunity arose with DNA Productions, Inc. After a number of years lighting at DNA and Nickelodeon his career led him to California to Pixar Animation Studios where he worked in lighting on Ratatouille, Wall-E, Up and Toy Story 3. When Pixar opened a new studio in Vancouver, BC … Continue reading
October 17th: Usable Usability Workshop by Eric Reiss
If people cannot use something you make, you have a serious problem. Usability is the science of ensuring that sites and apps do what they are supposed to do. Usable Usability ensures your cuatomers can succeed with whatever tasks you have designed to solve. Eric Reiss has literally written the book on this stuff. Its called Usable Usability: Simple Steps for Making Stuff Better. If you are interested in Lean UX, this workshop is where it all begins. After the workshop, there will be a book signing and social time. Register today. We have limited seating in this workshop. It will sellout. What … Continue reading
Featured Stories
Anyone Can Design with Markers, Paper, and Whiteboards
I built my first web site just for fun in 1996. I’ve been designing user interfaces and exploring user experience design professionally, full-time since 2005. Along the way, like a good digital designer, I’ve learned to use all kinds of fancy software tools to express design ideas: Adobe Creative Suite, Axure RP Pro, Balsamiq, and everything in between. Yet I’ve always believed these were the best tools for starting a software design project: Markers. Paper. Whiteboards. There has been a resurgence (or maybe an insurgence?) of interest in sketching in the UX and UI design industries. Suddenly there are articles, … Continue reading
October 17th: Usable Usability Workshop by Eric Reiss
If people cannot use something you make, you have a serious problem. Usability is the science of ensuring that sites and apps do what they are supposed to do. Usable Usability ensures your cuatomers can succeed with whatever tasks you have designed to solve. Eric Reiss has literally written the book on this stuff. Its called Usable Usability: Simple Steps for Making Stuff Better. If you are interested in Lean UX, this workshop is where it all begins. After the workshop, there will be a book signing and social time. Register today. We have limited seating in this workshop. It will sellout. What … Continue reading
Submit Your Talk for Big Design 2013
Speaker submissions are now open for Big Design 2013. Check out the form design by Keith Anderson, who took a ‘film noir” approach to our speaker submission form. We look forward to seeing your talks. Speaker submissions end on May 15th. Related articles Todd Zaki Warfel Closes Day 1 of Big Design 2013 Nathan Shedroff is the Opening Speaker for Big Design 2013 Big Design and Industry Giants Team Up! Design Like Da Vinci: Sketching Lessons from Leonardo [Slides] The Psychology of Online Videos: An Interview with Susan Weinschenk
Videos
[Video] What the Heck is UX Design?
What the heck is UX Design? The folks at UX Mastery created this interesting video that illustrates the UX Design process. It has some great captions and pictures to make it easy to follow. You will love their anecdotes and explanations. Running time is 5:40. Enjoy! Related articles Top 10 Best Practices for Video in UX Announcing Our UX Jobs Page Five Design Lessons from the Early Career of Charles Schultz [Infographic] History of Nintendo’s Growth Make Your Own Graffiti Gift Wrap Impact of Social Media on Productivity
[Video] When Your New UX Job Goes Bad
When you start a new UX job, your hopes run high. You want to improve sales, understand customers, solve problems, and do your best work. In this short video, it is a new Designer’s first day at the company. The Designer excitedly talks to a Manager about making a difference. The Designer inadvertently walks into several political issues, as the Manager hurls swear words at this poor UX soul. NOTE: You will hear some swear words in this video. And, you will still laugh at this all-too-familiar scene. Video Transcript Manager: Hello, you must be the new hire! I’m glad that we … Continue reading
[Video] The iPad Mini is an iPhone
I am Brian Sullivan. And, I support this video spoof. You will get a great laugh at this video by the funny folks at Livid Lobster, where they have some fun about the marketing of new technology by Apple. The funny thing is these jovial jabs come from Apple fans, who own iPads, iPhones, Macs, and iPods. In this short video, the Livid Lobster team really sales the new “cornea display” and smaller screen of the iPad Mini. Cali, John, and Dave from Livid Lobster all make appearances. I especially like Dave as the Technical Expert. This is a … Continue reading
Reviews
Interview with Frances Cole Jones (Author of How to Wow)
Frances Cole Jones is founder of Cole Media Management and author of How to Wow: Proven Strategies for Selling Your (Brilliant) Self in any Situation. Her company’s focus is to cultivate clients’ inherent strengths to develop more powerful communication skills. She is the creator of the “Interview Wow” app for the iPhone and iPad and her blog was voted one of the top 100 websites for women by Forbes.com. Hey Frances! Thanks for agreeing to do this interview. I just finished reading How to Wow and loved the book! You gave some great advice ranging from making lasting impressions to perfecting … Continue reading
Todd Zaki Warfel Closes Day 1 of Big Design 2013
Your closing keynote speaker for Day 1 of Big Design is Todd Zaki Warfel. You are going to love Todd! He is an author, designer, foodie, researcher, UX nerd, sketcher, prototyper, and more. Todd plays a mean game of Texas Hold’em, enjoys barbeque, and loves to talk about guerrilla research methods, HTML5, and prototyping. Recently, Todd has been tackling some wicked design issues with Big Data. Todd leads the design effort for identity.com. This product includes a public profile with the latest event automatically curated from any social network, a personal stats dashboard showing recent activity, and a fully integrated timeline … Continue reading
Design Like Da Vinci: Sketching Lessons from Leonardo [Slides and Audio]
Leonardo Da Vinci is the archetype of a Rennaisance man–artist, mathematician, sculptor, scientist, writer, and more. As an artist, Leonardo produced a very small sample of great work that included the Mona Lisa and the Last Supper. Leonardo was a prolific sketcher, producing more than 13,000 pages, which are arguably his greatest legacy. Within his sketchbooks, you can find futuristic devices like a helicopter, airplane, tank, and parachutes. But, you also find some practical things, such as a movable wall to to prevent invading forces and improved bridge designs. Here is my SxSW 2013 presentation called Design Like Da Vinci. … Continue reading
