IA Summit Presentations

by March 1, 2006

This year’s IA Summit looks fantastic. In addition to a long list of great speakers and topics, I’ll be presenting two tutorials as part of the Interaction Design Symposium and some of my work for eBay will be shown.

My first tutorial will focus on The Visual Design of Behavior and highlight how visual communication principles can support and enhance the interaction design & information architecture of applications. The session includes:

  • Overview of visual communication and its role within product design
  • Walkthrough of before and after screens that illustrate the impact of visual organization & personality on a product design
  • Explanation of core visual organization principles such as hierarchy and contrast
  • Discussion of how to use visual design to remove “noise” and focus user attention on relevant content and actions (example)
  • Hands-on exercises applying the principles discussed above
  • Overview of how specific visual elements contribute to the overall personality of an application (fonts, images, colors, and more)

My second presentation is part of a three-part session on today’s “new” Web experience jointly presented with David Heller and Frank Ramirez. I’ll be focusing on the Social and Community aspects of Web applications while Dave discusses rich interactions and Frank defines open architectures. My talk will include:

  • Comparison of how we think of “community” applications today vs. five years ago
  • Definitions of what and who defines social software
  • Overview of the interaction elements commonly found in social Web applications
  • Discussion about the pros and cons of enabling community features within products
  • Outline of best practices for designing social software (culled from my experiences working on products for eBay, Yahoo!, and more)

Lastly, James Reffell (UI Design Manager at eBay) will be presenting a paper on the work we did together designing and developing a Pattern Library for eBay last year. Hope to see you there~