Brian Keith Sullivan — Big Design Events

June 2nd: Movie Premiere at Big Design 2012

April 3, 2012 By Brian Keith Sullivan Leave a Comment

Design & Thinking Documentary on June 2, 2012

On Saturday evening from 8-11PM, we are going to transform the Trinity Ball Room into a red carpet event. We are going to show the Texas Premier of a new documentary called Design & Thinking. In this documentary, you will see a series of interviews from some fantastic design thinkers, including Tim Brown (CEO of IDEO), David Kelley (Founder of Stanford Design School), and Richard Grefe (CEO of AIGA). Get your popcorn ready! Preview of Design & Thinking Movie We plan to have a small panel of local leaders and the movie director briefly talk about design thinking. Then, we [...]

Filed Under: Review Tagged With: #BigD12, Design Thinking, movie

June 1st: Casino Night at Big Design 2012

April 1, 2012 By Brian Keith Sullivan Leave a Comment

On Friday evening from 8-11PM, we are going to transform the Trinity Ball Room into a Vegas Style Casino. Don’t worry, these games are just for fun. We will be giving away several different prizes donated by our great sponsors. You get the chance to challenge your new friends to various games of chance, including Craps, Roulette, Texas Hold-em, or Black Jack. For the light-hearted, we will have slot machines and a lounge singer. Yes, we said a lounge singer! We thought you would like a fun,interactive way to learn about these games of chance. Plus, you get to win [...]

Filed Under: Review Tagged With: #BigD12, casino, prizes, Vegas

Help Create the Big Design 2012 Sculptures

March 29, 2012 By Brian Keith Sullivan Leave a Comment

If you joined us at Big Design 2011, there is no way you could have missed the sculptures called My Favorite Machine. These sculptures were the center-piece of the Big Design trade show. People loved them. They stood by them and posed. Well. our resident Big Design artist, Roger Belveal, is back with his blow torch ready. As our culture speeds headlong in this digital age, the slick aesthetic has reached toxic levels. This overdose of untouchable virtual brings with it a kind of sensory deficit. As much as we love the capabilities that the digital world brings, there is [...]

Filed Under: Review Tagged With: art, Information Age, Monolith, MyPhonehenge, Roger Belveal, Technology

Your 11AM Choices on June 1st…Oh My!!!

March 22, 2012 By Brian Keith Sullivan Leave a Comment

When you go to the Big Design Conference 2012, the 11AM hour is your another “power hour” of speakers. Yes, you have to choose to between maintaining your design sanity, beyond gamification, thriving in SASS, and design thinking in World War II. Your speakers include an independent UX consultant, a design rock star, a development geek, and a UX soldier. Yes, we have a former soldier talking about design thinking in World War II. How cool is that! Details are below. Choice #1: Maintaining Your Design Sanity In-house designers, or ”creatives”, regularly work for companies and organizations that are not [...]

Filed Under: Review Tagged With: #BigD12, Axis & Allies, cascading style sheet, CSS, design, Design Thinking, SASS, Usability, UX, World War II

Help Us, Help Dana

March 19, 2012 By Brian Keith Sullivan Leave a Comment

Dana Chisnell believes that democracy is a design problem. After the 2000 Presidential election with its “butterfly ballot” in Florida, Dana began to creates a set of best practices to help election officials. Dana discovered that the designer of the butterfly ballot wanted to do the right thing. This designer knew her county had older people, so she wanted to make the type bigger, which would make it easier to read. Making that well-intentioned change to the design of the ballot did make it easier to read. But it made it harder to use. Thousands of people voted in a [...]

Filed Under: Review Tagged With: #BigD12, Dana Chisnell, help, usabiity, UX, voting

Designing for Awareness in Attention Economy [Transcript]

March 9, 2012 By Brian Keith Sullivan Leave a Comment

At Big Design Conference 2011, Taylor Cowan and Brian Sullivan gave a talk about designing for awareness in the attention economy. Taylor and Brian will be giving an updated version of this talk at SxSW Interactive 2012. Dr. Leslie McMillan of UTD’s ATEC program provided the transcript. You may want to go ahead and review the slideshow, and them bookmark this page for future reference. Enjoy! Design for Awareness View more PowerPoint from Brian Sullivan [Transcript provided by UTD's ATEC program] What is the Attention Economy? Today, you are going to learn about an incredible facet of the human mind, [...]

Filed Under: Review Tagged With: Attention Economy, awareness, Taylor Cowan

Five Ways to Improve Your Mental Alertness

March 9, 2012 By Brian Keith Sullivan 2 Comments

Here a five things you can do to stay mentally alert. Yawning cools your brain, which increases your alertness (source) Yoga boosts oxygen to your brain for better concentration (source) Drinking green tea improves your memory & ability to learn (source) Aerobic exercise helps with age-related memory loss (source) Dark chocolate contains phenylethylamine and anandamide which increases awareness. (source) What other ways do you know that help you increase your awareness? Please let us know below.

Filed Under: Review Tagged With: attention, brain, Brian Sullivan, Thought

What’s Your 10AM Choices on Friday, June 1st?

March 8, 2012 By Brian Keith Sullivan Leave a Comment

When you go to the Big Design Conference 2012, the 10AM hour is your next “power hour” of speakers. So many good talks, so many choices. See a talk, visit the trade show, find a friend. You are not going to want to miss anything. Choice #1: Design Thinking During World War II (Ben Judy) The Axis and Allies had vastly different approaches to design during the second World War. The German war machine operated with equipment built around such values as precision, technical accuracy, and complex innovation. By contrast, Allied equipment was often simpler, more durable, and “scrappier.” The [...]

Filed Under: Big D 2012, Conference

[Video] Jim Henson and Human-Computer Interactions (1963)

March 6, 2012 By Brian Keith Sullivan Leave a Comment

In 1963, Jim Henson produced an animated short about human-computer interactions from the perspective a robot. This short film was originally commissioned for a seminar in Chicago aimed at business owners about the topic of data communications. AT&T recently discovered this short, verified it was done by Jim Henson, and posted it on You Tube. The robot narrator exudes some very human=like qualities. Physically, you can make out eyes, ears, mouth, teeth, lips, and more. As the robot “speaks” to you, notice the egotistical qualities of pride, arrogance, and (ultimately, humility). The goal of the this short video was to talk [...]

Filed Under: Videos Tagged With: #BigD12, AT&T, design, Jim Henson, Muppet, Russ Unger, Short film, speakers, UX, video, YouTube

Your Development Speakers for Big Design 2012

March 2, 2012 By Brian Keith Sullivan Leave a Comment

We added a stellar line-up of speakers in the Development track for Big Design 2012. You may want to stay and watch them all! Get your tickets today! Thomas Phinney. CSS3 Web Typography Changes Everything Web typography has been changing dramatically thanks to browser support for @font-face and server-based fonts. Web designers now have thousands of font choices where they once had just a dozen. But beyond @font-face, CSS 3 introduces myriad new OpenType typographic controls, being supported by the latest browsers. These OpenType features bring to web design the level of typographic refinement that print designers have enjoyed for the [...]