Speaker Spotlight: Bill Scott (Design Lenses: Lessons from Other Design Crafts)

Bill Scott is one of the most humble men that I know. Here is the bio that Bill sent me: Bill Scott is co-author of Designing Web Interfaces and a frequent conference speaker. He is currently the VP of Product Engineering at Meebo; formerly the Director of UI Engineering at Netflix, Pattern Curator for the Yahoo! Design Pattern Library, Yahoo! Ajax Evangelist & co-creator of one of the first Ajax frameworks – Rico.

Yes, the above biographical information is accurate. Bill is being very humble, in my opinion. Bill’s design pattern book is a must read. You should have a copy of it on your desk, e-reader, or both. His blog, looksgoodworkswell, is filled with nuggets, stories, fundamentals, and more. You walk away from hos talks and conversations as a better person.

Write this down (or bookmark this page). Here is Bill’s contact information:

• Twitter username: @billwscott, @uxlenses
• Websites: http://looksgoodworkswell.com, www.designingwebinterfaces.com
• LinkedIn profile page: linkedin.com/in/billwscott
• Amazon author’s page (if applicable): http://www.amazon.com/Bill-Scott/e/B0021W9F6U

Session Talk: Designing with Lenses–Lessons from Other Design Crafts

A powerful approach is to capture lessons from other design crafts into “design lenses”.  A design lens allows you to view the user experience through the eyes of a single design principle. Lenses were originally created for game design but are just as powerful for user experience design. In this talk, Bill will introduce the idea of design lenses and discuss several lenses inspired from fields of study as diverse as theater, magic, game design, storytelling, Shaker furniture, motion graphics, and comics for inspiration in designing rich, interactive interfaces.  By teasing out some of the key takeaways from each of these disciplines, a fresh light can be shed on our own corner of the design universe.

Some Other Things About Bill Scott

I consider Bill Scott, one of my mentors.   When I first got interested in the field of design, usability, and experience, Bill and I worked at the same company.  I borrowed 15 different books, which helped to teach me about this new world.  Weird to say it now–almost 10 years ago.  Today, he is still a mentor to me (and lots of other people, too).