Sign-Up for Big Design Week: November 14-18, 2011

Big Design Week is five days of UX workshops, where you can increase your knowledge of existing tools, learn practical methods, and build new skills. You can use what you learn right away. Workshops are Monday, November 14 through Friday, November 18. Attend only the workshops you want.

Day 1: From Concept to Prototype–How to Kickstart Your Designs

Monday, November 14 (9AM-4PM)
Preston McCauley illustrates several methods for getting your concept quickly fleshed out, identifying hidden agendas, determining requirements when you see only fuzzy ones, and rapidly moving to prototyping in this hands-on workshop. You will get the opportunity to play some familiar roles during the workshop.

Day 2: Developing Your Content Strategy & Writing Effective Content

Tuesday, November 15 (9AM-4PM)
Keith Anderson explains how to design an effective content strategy to reach your customers. You will develop personas in this workshop, which you can use for writing content. During the last part of the day, you will go through a series of hands-on exercises where you will write content to attract new customers and keep your existing customers coming back.

Day 3: Agile Usability Boot Camp–Scrappy UX Methods & Tools To Use Right Away

Wednesday, November 16 (9AM-4PM)
You don’t have to work in an agile environment to inject smart, scrappy usability methods into your projects. These methods and techniques help usability professionals and designers to meet tight deadlines, while informing their design decisions. Scrappy usability methods fit nicely into agile approaches and other processes. In this workshop, you will learn from an agile manager, agile coach, and usability professional on how to apply scrappy UX methods.

Who Should Come

Beginners and experienced usability professionals and designers should come to this workshop. You will learn smart, scrappy methods that you can use on your projects. This workshop will help you to plan your future projects, inject design and usability regardless of tight deadlines, and increase your existing tool kit with proven methods and techniques.

Meet Your Instructors

Jim Carlsen-Landy, UX Director, opens your day with his insights from managing designers and usability professionals on agile teams. Jim explains several approaches for gaining stakeholder acceptance, negotiated for more resources, and partnering with project owners.

Caleb Jenkins, an Agile Coach, starts your second hour with lessons on how UX can fit into agile teams and some agile techniques you can use.

Brian Sullivan, a Usability Principal and Big Design Conference organizer, ends the day with a series of usability methods and techniques that you can use within a two-week sprint. These scrappy methods can be used on any projects.

What You Will Learn

• How to manage UX deliverables with tight deadlines
• Where designers and usability professionals fit on agile teams
• How to develop a scrappy UX mindset on your project
• 5 agile techniques you can use on projects with tight deadlines
• 10 different usability methods you can do within two weeks

Day 4: Efficient Workflow Techniques:  Tips & Tricks for Mastering CS5

Thursday, November 17 (9AM-4PM)
There is a reason A.J. Wood is called “The Adobe Wan.” His mastery of the Adobe Creative Suite is only exceeded by his uncanny ability to make those software tools accessible to everyone. Join A.J. as he demonstrates workflow tips for Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign as well as Adobe beta products such as Edge & Muse. Take control of your software and enjoy the time an efficient workflow can give back to you.

Day 5: Putting It Into Motion: Understanding the Design Essentials of Motion Graphics

Friday, November 18 (9AM-4PM)
J. Schuh the “Texas Animator” always a wild and crazy guy, will show you how to apply design fundamentals to motion graphics and take your designs to the next level. Using After Effects, J. will incorporate Photoshop and Illustrator designs to show animation principles and demonstrate key concepts for creating motion graphics.