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 in 2010 Chris made the move to Canada to be the Lighting Supervisor at the newly formed studio where he’s been for the past three years working on short films for the studio.

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• October 17th: Usable Usability Workshop by Eric Reiss
• Todd Zaki Warfel Closes Day 1 of Big Design 2013
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• Anyone Can Design with Markers, Paper, and Whiteboards
• Interview with Frances Cole Jones (Author of How to Wow)

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, books, conference presentations, and workshops about sketching. People are are posting big lists of links to all of the above. There is renewed interest in the sketches of past geniuses such as Leonardo Da Vinci. I think all of that is great. Designers should sketch. I’ll go along with that.

But why do I feel these are the best tools to begin designing something? And what does this have to do with you, even if you aren’t a designer? Great questions. Here are my rambling answers.

1. Tool skills? Tools kill!

First, let’s lose the silly notion that you can’t design solutions because you don’t have the tool skills.

I won’t name names of course, but I’ve worked with some fairly unimpressive “designers” who knew every feature of a dozen software design tools. Those skills didn’t contribute one iota to their ability to solve complex problems and deliver great user experiences. “Photoshop skills do not a designer make,” I always say.

I’ve interviewed many candidates to join UX teams, sometimes as a contributing team member and sometimes as the team manager. In both cases, the most important part of the interview — the part I paid closest attention to — was when I asked the candidate to pick up a dry-erase marker and sketch on a whiteboard to begin solving a problem.

Many candidates hesitated to pick up the marker. They kept waving their hands in the air and talking. Some refused to get out of their seats and stand before the whiteboard, apparently intimidated by its glossy, blank surface. They just wouldn’t express their ideas by drawing. They looked impotent without their computer, like a lumberjack without a saw or an axe, but usually (once we were past the grunge era) wearing less flannel.

I didn’t recommend those people join the team. On the other hand, I added some awesome designers to my team largely because of their enthusiasm in picking up the marker and visualizing their thoughts. Potential solutions were practically bursting from their fingertips. Words weren’t enough, they had to sketch it out. Those people are designers.

A “designer” who can’t scrawl ideas on paper is like a self-described theoretical physicist who can’t do simple arithmetic. It’s bizarre and nonsensical. Sure, you might be able to fake it by showing a veneer of prowess with the more complex stuff — because nobody around you understands it. But demonstrating a lack of ability in basic skills exposes you as a fraud. That old legend about Einstein failing math as a youngster is a lie. If you don’t work out problems in simple sketches, you’re probably not a real designer.

So you know how to extrude and bevel 3D objects in Adobe Photoshop? Awesome! That doesn’t make you a designer.

2. Anyone can do it!

I think the fact that anyone can sketch designs is a beautiful thing. I can say this with complete confidence and security in my choice of profession: anyone with a working brain and opposable thumbs can be a designer. Some of us have just applied ourselves to the practice with more vigor, over more time, than others — but the barrier to entry in this discipline is near zero. (And with the current supply/demand equation tipping sharply in our direction, it’s nowhere near as hard as some would make it seem to land a paying job as a UX or UI designer.)

Yes, you too can be a designer. To some people who are insecure in their jobs, that kind of talk is scary. I’ve worked in large corporate environments long enough to have seen all kinds of job insecurity-related disorders. “Not just anyone can do what I do! You couldn’t replace me! Why, without me, nothing would get done around here.”

I’ve seen designers adopt this attitude, too. I think I understand the psychological fear behind it. I just don’t agree with it.

I’m the only designer on my team. But if designs are hand-drawn sketches, I don’t have to be the lone genius unicorn with magical ninja design skills.  I get to teach, lead, inspire, and (most fun for me) learn from my colleagues as we design together. That’s way less scary, and way more fun.

By the way, if you ever call me a “design ninja” I will throw up on you.

3. Designing. Not drawing.

Don’t confuse design and art — they are very different things.

I can’t draw my way out of a paper bag. I couldn’t draw a Liger like this if my life depended on it. It’s awesome.

This notion that basic design skills are so simple trips people up, especially in big, corporate environments. People think: “Sketching? It’s not sophisticated enough. I mean, especially in a large enterprise environment, aren’t hand-drawn sketches kind of… too easy? Shouldn’t this kind of work be hard?”

Well, yes, good design thinking is hard work. But it’s the thinking that matters. Not the drawing. I’m not paid to draw pretty pictures. I’m paid to question, listen, observe, think, collaborate, and help my team solve problems. In my pursuit of those solutions, I scribble drawings so others can understand my thoughts.

When the time comes to make pretty pictures, I can always hire someone with artistic visual talents. And I do, even for user research efforts. I recently hired a freelance graphic designer to take my user personas and draw a stylish, vector-based, illustrated “Persona Map” indicating reporting structure and responsibilities within the organization. Because, it’s true — the research can be great and all, but global executives want to see pretty pictures.

But I didn’t start in Adobe Illustrator. I didn’t even use Illustrator myself. I did the research and worked out the hard thinking on paper first. I interviewed and observed a couple dozen people in five different markets. I sketched what I thought I heard and asked for their feedback on the sketches. Then I asked someone else to draw up the pretty pictures. I had the artwork done in no time at the meager cost of $110 via Elance.com.

My lack of artistic skill had zero impact on the success of the research project. All I had to do was create a quick sketch of my brilliant thoughts so someone else could get the concept.

4. Good designers express solutions with utmost simplicity.

Ideas cannot survive unless they are shared in the most common terms possible. This is especially true in the early stages of a project.

There is certainly a time and place for fancy graphics programs, taking raw ideas into the realm of high-fidelity and interactive experiences. And I love doing that. But if you start there, you’re missing the point. And you’re quite possibly drawing very lovely pictures of very bad solutions.

Even a brief review of books or articles about achieving simplicity in design process will reveal the same themes popping up repeatedly:

• Clear communication
• Visualization
• Alignment with stakeholders
• Gathering input from a diverse group
• Iteration

If there is a faster, better means of exercising these principles than sketching, I haven’t found it yet.

5. Great solutions start with many shared ideas.

There is great power in turning your thoughts and words into unpretentious, unvarnished, hasty pictures that anyone could look at and think, “I could have drawn that…”

Then — and this is magical — their next thought is, “I could have thought that.” And so they do think it. Then you have understanding. A meeting of minds. Critique. Iteration. Collaboration. Suddenly you are designing together. And it all started with a humble, hand-drawn, back-of-a-napkin sketch.

The innovation team I’m working with is about to begin the design stage in one of our projects (we call them experiments.) We’re going to sketch. There will be lots and lots and lots of sketches, drawn by lots of people, representing lots of ideas.

Most of the sketches will be thrown away almost immediately. Ultimately, all of the them will be discarded. Indeed, many of the ideas behind the sketches will be poor ideas. But the good ideas will be quickly grasped, identified as valuable, discussed, tweaked, and drawn again. Until we arrive at a solution that all of us agree is the way forward.

No fancy graphics programs or magical design skills required. Just your brain, a marker, and a piece of paper.

Like when you were a kid.

This is my three-year-old daughter Ashley. One Saturday she came into my study, picked up one of my markers, and sketched. I asked her what it was.

“It’s a humidifier.”

She’s three. Of course it is.

“With a green light. It goes hissssssssss.”

Ah. I see that now.

A humidifier might seem a mundane object to an adult, but it is a rather sophisticated piece of machinery to a three-year-old. I doubt Ashley even understands the concept of steam, or what a humidifier does. She just knows that on dry nights we put a humidifier in her room. It’s dark. It has a dial that glows green. It makes a quiet hissing noise.

She was fascinated by it, and it was on her mind. She wanted to share this amazing thing with me, for me to understand that she was thinking about the humidifier in her room. So she just had to draw it. I didn’t suggest she do that.

Having learned the skill of holding a marker in her hand and moving it across a drawing surface, she intuited that a thing drawn is a thing expressed. Although she has an above-normal vocabulary for a child her age, she didn’t begin with words. She just started drawing. Then, when I asked her about the meaning, she used words to clarify.

Ashley’s drawing wasn’t brilliant. But after she told me what it was and explained its key features, the sketch worked for me. I got it. It was a humidifier with a green light that goes hisssss. Duh.

Make it better. Together.

Could you pick up a marker, stand next to Ashley, and try to improve on her design? (Not improve on the drawing, mind you — but the concept?) Or are you going to be that sad, shriveled up shell of a person who believes a three year old can do something you can’t?

What would you draw to make her humidifier better? Could you explain to others why you drew what you drew? Can you then step back and let others draw, and critique their thoughts?

If so, you can design. So let’s design something great. Together.

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 You Will Learn

In this workshop, you will learn an alternative way to cut the usability cake.  For Eric, usability builds on three E’s – Ease, Elegance, Empathy.

Lean UX begins here.  You will learn about a method for evaluating and improving products and services in a truly lean and agile way.  You will have plenty of hands-on techniques to carry out guerilla-style usability hacks that show the value of usability to the people in charge of the budgets.

If users shouldn’t be expected to think, we, as designers, need to do the thinking for them! We MUST think! Here’s a quick rundown of the topics we’ll be covering, based on Eric’s best-selling book, Usable Usability, from John Wiley & Sons.

Ease of Use

Ease of use – the product does what I want it to do. This deals with physical properties. Hence, the interactive elements should be:

• Functional (the buttons work, the speed is acceptable)
• Responsive (the application reacts to your input, the application provides cognitive feedback)
• Ergonomic (Fitt’s Law, keyboard shortcuts, field tabbing, etc.)
• Convenient (content and interactive objects are there where I need them and elements that are needed simultaneously are visible simultaneously)
• Foolproof (less risk of error through RAF – Remind, Alert, Force. Less reliance on instructions)

Elegance and Clarity

Elegance and clarity – the product does what I expect it to do. This deals with psychological properties. Hence, interactive elements should be:

• Visible (controls that can’t be seen don’t exist. Cut down the visual noise. Think feng shui)
• Understandable (clear and concise, no unexplained icons, colors and physical groupings for related functions and to improve scent)
• Logical (don’t make me think, build sensible flows)
• Consistent (always the same name for the same function, no reuse of icons for different functions, no behavioral changes as objects open or close)
• Predictable (functions and navigation always in same place, elements don’t suddenly change behavior)

Empathy

Empathy – understanding and addressing the needs of the users. After all, you can’t practice user-centered or user-driven design if you don’t care about these folks.

Register today.  We have limited seating in this workshop. It will sellout.

All About Eric Reiss

Eric Reiss has been meddling with service- and product-design projects for longer than he cares to remember. Today, he is CEO of The FatDUX Group, an international user-experience design company headquartered in Copenhagen, Denmark. Eric has also lectured on design principles at the Bauhaus University in Weimar, is a former Professor of Usability and Design at the IE Business School in Madrid, and serves on the advisory boards of several universities and institutes in both Europe and the United States. His Web Dogma, a design philosophy that transcends both fashion and technology, has been adopted by 1000s of developers and companies around the world.

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• 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 PowerPoint presentations.  Tell me, what are you working on for the future? What’s next?

I’m working on an e-book titled “Wow Your Way into the Job of Your Dreams.” It’s not about figuring out what your dream job is; instead, once you’ve targeted your dream job, it tells you how to get it.

In your experience, what are some of the common mistakes professionals make before and during a presentation or public appearance?

In my experience, people tend to either under prepare, or spend too much time preparing the visual aspect of their presentation and not enough time fine-tuning their message, and the delivery of that message.

Underpreparing sounds a lot like the executive who says, “I work better off the cuff,” or “I do better when I wing it,” etc.

FYI: nobody does better when they wing it.

While visuals can be effective, they should not take the place of a carefully honed message. In addition to knowing why you care about your subject matter, you need to know why your audience should care about your subject matter—what’s in it for them? How is your information going to improve their life? If you can’t answer that question you aren’t prepared—I don’t care how great your visuals are.

Once you’ve answered that question, and created visuals that support your message, you need to practice out loud. There is no way around that. You can think you know exactly what you’re going to say and how you’re going to say it but until you hear it coming out of your mouth, you aren’t going to notice that you are missing a transition or that there is a gigantic hole in your logic.

I think most people understand that having great communication skills are important to success in any field.  What are some recommendations you might have to increase these skills for professional and personal relationships?

I recommend thinking about the UCLA percentages of influence regarding how we weight the 3 aspects of communication: verbal, vocal, and visual. What Professor Albert Mehrabian discovered is that people only remember 7% of what we say to them; 38% of our impact comes from our tonal quality; and 55% from what our body is doing while we are speaking.

This means you need to think about telling stories when you speak, as they keep you away from useless modifiers like, “Great,” “Amazing,” “Awesome” etc. which convey nothing. It means that when you say something as seemingly simple as “I’m happy to meet you,” you actually need to sound happy.

And it means that you need to consider what your body is doing while you are speaking. Are you arms crossed in front of you? Are you leaning back in your chair in a ‘too cool for school’ kind of way? Are your hands where people can see them? We trust you when we can see your hands and we don’t trust you when we can’t, etc.

Sharing presentations on websites such as slideshare.net have become an important and expected practice after speaking at conferences.  Any advice or tips on how to create a presentation that will be shared?

I notice a lot of people don’t want to give up, or give away, what they view as “proprietary information” (Otherwise known as “my ideas.”) so they create presentations that dance around information, but aren’t ultimately useful.

For example, someone will do a presentation on team building and say something like, “Teams are really important. Without teams companies cannot thrive. In order to be effective teams must be strong. And strong teams need strong leaders.”

This kind of thing d.r.i.v.e.s  m.e. c.r.a.z.y. Tell me HOW build a strong team—don’t just talk around the issue.

In my view, ideas are limitless. If you’ve had a few good ones, give them away! Offer your audience a ton of practical application information. Let them take all your good ideas—you’ll have more! (And if you don’t, that shouldn’t be your audience’s problem.) Presentations with a ton of takeaways are the ones that are shared.

In the field of User Experience (UX) design, designers are working to create experiences that include touch, sounds, and even smells.  Digital interfaces such as websites, smart phones and tablets are also being used for audience participation.  In what ways, do you see these elements becoming an expected part of presentations in the future?  

I think people will always be turned on by technology, but that—at the end of the day—if you don’t have a good story to tell your technology isn’t going to save your presentation: the audience will remember that the effects were cool, but they won’t retain your message. To me, the best UX design enhances a speaker’s story, it doesn’t replace it.

The ‘Second Screen’ Experience is where people will watch an event then chat about it using a second device like a phone or tablet. This has been happening at conferences for years and now is happening in living rooms. How are you preparing your clients to take advantage of positive feedback or deal effectively with negative comments that are being spread live to hundreds or even millions of people via social media channels?

I think the most effective way to take advantage of positive feedback, and stay on top of negative comments, is to stop your presentation every 5-7 minutes for questions. Allowing your audience to participate ensures they stay involved, no matter how they feel about what you are saying. If they are feeling positive—and you let them contribute—they become still more invested in your success, as it’s now their success. If they are feeling negative, allowing them to air their concern/grievance/complaint will enable them to keep listening until the end, rather than simply saying to themselves, “This person is wrong so I’m going to pull out my phone and start doing a little light texting.”

With regard to handling hostile questions, a good technique to know is: if it’s big, make it small; if it’s small, make it big. So, if you are speaking about a particular kind of technology and someone says, “This is ridiculous! How can you believe people will buy into that?” you say, “You sound like you’ve had some experience with users being resistant to technology. Can you tell me exactly what occurred in your situation?” Alternatively, if they say, “When I introduced X into my office, no one was willing to risk using the interface so how can you think yours will be different?” Then you say, “Has anyone else in the audience had trouble getting their colleagues to adapt to new technology?”

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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.  

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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 across social services.

Why Todd Loves Prototyping?

Todd started prototyping in art school because he always liked to tinker with his hands. Todd’s grandfather was a wood worker, so young Todd would just sit in the shop and watch his grandpa make stuff. He would alwys be drawing in his grandpa’s workshop.  As it turned out, Todd liked to draw and work with his hands.  When he grew up, sketching and prototyping were just part of his process.

Check out this short video where Todd works with other designers to sketch and prototype:

You are going to love this talk!  See him close out Day 1 of Big Design 2013 on Friday, October 18th.

Get your tickets today.

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• Design Like Da Vinci: Sketching Lessons from Leonardo [Slides]

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.  Enjoy!

Listen to the audio at Sound Cloud:

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Your opening keynote speaker for Big Design 2013 is Nathan Shedroff, who is a serial entrepreneur, innovator, speaker, author, teacher, and sci-fi fanatic.  Nathan was an Interaction Designer before there was a term for it.

These days, he runs the MBA in Design Strategy at California College of the Arts. This program combines the latest tools, processes, and approaches to business and leadership, design thinking, sustainability, and integrative thinking into one comprehensive program.  It has nerd written all over it (and we love him for it).

Recently, Nathan watched about two years of sci-fi films.  He was doing research for a book that he co-authored with his friend, Chris Noessel.  The book is from Rosenfeld Media.  It is called Make It So: Learning From Sci-Fi Interfaces

Design Inspiration from Sci-Fi Films

While you might think it is a no-brainer that designers get inspiration from science fiction films.  It is really more sophisticated.  It’s not just a matter of:

“Open the pod bay doors, Siri. Oops, I mean, HAL!”

In 1988, Nathan has the ideas to do a book on what designers could learn from sci-fi films.  It many years to research (and watch) all those films.  Nathan and Chris only started to work on seriously in 2007.

It had always occurred to Nathan that interesting interfaces were depicted in SciFi films and television but it wasn’t until Star Trek: The Next Generation that he saw regular and thoughtful explorations into more than the arrangement of buttons on a panel. Each week, he saw new, interesting ideas that build on several decades of foundation.  In the film world, interfaces were becoming similarly more considered and original.

What You Will Get From This Talk?

Aside from some thoughtful (and fun) examples, you will come away with a framework for how SciFi and Design are influencing each other. You won’t know everything in just one hour, but you learn a bunch of the lessons Nathan uncovered during his research.  You will learn the thing:

• How SciFi turns-out to be a legitimate process for designing and developing.
• Ways the Pentagon and many corporations use it in their research and development.
• See relevant examples from sci-fi film on how designs were created.

In many respects, Design is fiction already.  Ironically, much of business development is a fiction (until you start to develop it).

You are going to love this talk!  Get your tickets today.

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You might know Dr. Susan Weinschenk as “The Brain Lady,” or from her various books including 100 Things Every Presenter Needs To Know About People, 100 Things Every Designer Needs To Know About People, and Neuro Web Design: What makes them click? Her latest book, How To Get People To Do Stuff, is due out next month.

Dr. Weinschenk has worked as a behavioral psychologist for over 30 years.  She is the founder of the Weinschenk Institute. Her early work included research on the left and right hemispheres of the brain. After years of teaching and working with clients that include Best Buy, Charles Schwab, Disney and Walmart; she has returned to her neuropsychology roots doing research on unconscious mental processing – decision making, persuasion, and emotion.

Recently Dr. Weinschenk did a video on 4 Reasons Why Online Video is Compelling & Persuasive.  Always interested in what other experts have found with regard to Video and UX, I took the opportunity to interview her and get her thoughts and ideas on other video related questions. Enjoy!

Susan, tell us what you have been up to lately?

I’m finishing my latest book, How To Get People To Do Stuff, which will be out in a few weeks (available via pre-order on Amazon now!). If you have liked my previous books, you should enjoy this one, too.

I’m doing some consulting.

I am teaching, too.  I have created some online video training (available at udemy.com).  Plus, I am teaching a course at University of Wisconsin, Stevens Point as an Adjunct Professor — Designing for Engagement.

I really enjoyed your post on the “4 Reasons Why Online Video is Compelling and Persuasive.”  What are some tips and strategies for creating the most effective content in a video?

Here are some key points to remember:

1. Make sure you know your target audience and create content they crave.
2. Don’t take too long to “introduce” the idea, get right into it.
3. Talk faster than you usually do.
4. Use emotion in your message, your voice, and your face if you are in the video.

What are some ways to measure how effective or persuasive a video is? – 

Just like a website or any other product, really.  Decide what the target action or call to action is — what do you want people to do after they watch the video? Tweet about it? Pick up the phone and call you? Sign up for something? Change their behavior? Decide on a measurable action and then measure it!

We have all seen “bad” videos on the web. What are some indicators of a poorly produced video?

Video production doesn’t have to be perfect in some cases.  Here are few pointers:

1. Try to have the best quality (lights, camera etc) that you can afford.
2. Make sure the video is interesting.
3. Make sure your script is written to be talked, not read.
4. Avoid “marketing speak.”  We see a lot of videos where the script sounds like someone is reading “marketing speak”.

What makes a video usable? What makes a video a user experience?

The user should be able to control it (start, stop, pause, etc). The sound needs to be good — clear, easy to hear. The content needs to be entertaining or useful. There should be some action/movement.

Can you describe situations where videos should absolutely be used, if possible?

When you want to convey emotions, feelings, or stories… when you want to convince people to take action. when you want to grab and hold attention

Can you tell us situations where videos should NOT be used?

When people can’t give their visual attention (driving, etc)

We have all seen Hollywood and ad agencies produce videos that don’t get the exposure they wanted; where someone shooting their cat will get millions of views. What in your opinion makes one video go viral where others do not, despite best efforts?

I’ll be posting a video about why things go viral within a week!   But, I can tell you that things go viral when:

• They are funny (gangnam  style)
• They involve cute animals
• They involve cute babies (remember “charlie bit my finger“)
• When they elicit strong emotions (research by Jonathan Berger)
• When they entail a story

What suggestions do you have for people who are wanting to start developing video content for themselves or their companies?

Dive in. Don’t wait for perfection. Just start. You’ll figure it out as you go along.

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For its meeting on February 19th, the UX Dallas Meetup Group will proudly have J. Schuh present his Top 10 Best Practices for Video and UX.  For those who do not know him, J. Schuh creates animated shorts and cartoons in his daily work. His work has appeared on Fox and Comedy Central. He is currently working on a documentary and a book.  In addition, you can find him organizing the Industry Giants Conference, which is teaming up with the Big Design Conference this year.

For the past few years, his work has been around animated shorts, marketing videos, motion graphics, and film. J. Schuh is going to let you know about the Top 10 Best Practices for incorporating video into your user experiences.  Currently, we have over 90 people signed up for this talk.  It will be standing room only.

What’s the Importance of Video and UX?

Several people have asked about the importance of video and UX.  Many UX designers fail to see the importance of this topic.  Here are a few reasons why this topic is very important now:

• Laptops, phones, and tablets have built-in video devices.
• Tech-savvy consumers have four different ways to take video (cameras, phones, tablets, laptops).
• Streaming video consumes over 30% of the Internet bandwith in the US every evening.
• Vimeo, Miveo, You Tube, Facebook, and WordPress support fast upload of video.
• Some of the most popular apps are video-related in the App Store.
• You Tube is one of the Top 5 search engines on the Internet.
• Video provides an incredible amount of SEO, especially when you have captions and transcripts.
• Delivery devices support a “second screen experience” now, where you watch on one device and interact on a second one.

While you may not be directly supporting or designing a video site, you will, more than likely, end up encountering video in your designs.  The future is being created now.

Sign up for the UX Dallas Meetup Group to attend this talk on February 19th.  See you there.

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