First Presentation: Lou Rosenfeld

Lou Rosenfeld has quite an impressive list of accomplishments. Of those accomplishments, Information Architecture for the World Wide Web is probably the most well known. Lou’s presentation was about his newest endeavour: a company called Rosenfeld Media. Rosenfeld Media is a publishing house dedicated to developing short, practical, and useful books on user experience design.

Lou talked about trying to come up with innovative designs for ancient products: namely, books. He talked about how he used UX techniques in developing his publishing company, as well as testing his books on users, and how that contributed to the design.

He introduced a social application that is currently in beta, called UX Zeitgeist: it’s a tool for rating UX books, and voting on what kinds of UX books are needed.

He also threw out a few ideas and fielded a few questions about how he’s trying to be innovative with distributing his books in PDF format. I found this subject quite interesting, since I am currently brainstorming of new ways to promote and distribute my music. I really wish that he had gone into a little more detail on this subject.

Overall, I thought that the talk was quite well put together, but a little bit unsubstantial. I didn’t really think that his business ideas were very innovative, but maybe if he had gone into more detail about his business model and how he was planning on distributing and marketing his products, I would have found it more useful.

Second Presentation: Brad Nemer

Brad Nemer is a product portfolio manager for Motorola’s 3G efforts in Asia. He’s also got an MBA and a Masters of Design.

Brad led a workshop on constraints, and how they affect what we do.

For this workshop we broke into groups. Each group was given a sport, and were named manager of one of the teams in that league. We were given a list of new rules (different from the current game rules), and were asked to discuss how these constraints would affect the game. We discussed things like: equipment, fans, fitness/skill level, etc.

After that, he proclaimed each group as commissioners of the whole league, and presented us with a few more constraints. We were asked to come up with creative ways in which we could multiply the current profits of the league.

Overall, I thought that the talk had a lot of potential, but in the end, it didn’t really go anywhere. I would have liked to spend a little less time discussing things in our groups, and a little more time listening to some of Brad’s theories on how to overcome constraints.

Third Presentation: The Banff Leadership Arts Ensemble

The Banff Leadership Arts Ensemble performed a play for us. This wasn’t your average theatre format, though. The play was based on a book that I can’t remember the name of, but was, none-the-less, amazing.

The format of this theatre was what really intrigued me most. Since I’m not a theatre buff, I don’t know what this form of theatre is called, but I’m going to call it “Fly-on-the-wall Theater”.

Scene 1 started with everyone in the same room. We were all in a board room, along with all the actors, almost like a normal play, but almost as if we were part of the play. Scene 2 is where everything got interesting.

When the board meeting (scene 1) was over, we, the audience, had the option to follow whichever character we found the most interesting. As the character left the room they entered conversation with another character (scene 2). At that point, we, the audience had the choice to follow this new character, or continue with the character that we had originally found interesting. This continued for 8 scenes. At the end of the play, all the characters ended up in the same room. At this point we, the audience, were allowed to discuss amongst ourselves, and try to figure out the rest of the story, according to how each of us witnessed it.

The story was about corporate life in an organization. There were a lot of politics and personal issues. The interesting part was how the personal issues affected the politics, and vice versa.

The moral of the story was: there’s always more to a story than what you can see.

Fourth Presentation: Jess McMullin

Jess McMullin is one of the owners of nForm, a UX consultancy firm in Edmonton, Alberta. He also co-founded the Information Architecture Institute and is the founder of the CanUX conference.

Jess’ presentation was called The Business Side of UX. It discussed ways to increase our influence on clients and co-workers.

A few things that I got out of his presentation were:

1. Always be aware of new opportunities.
2. Identify the decision-maker.
   • Who is the person that can actually take your suggestions, and make them happen?
3. Understand where people/clients/co-workers are coming from.
   • People react according to what is going on in their life. If you can find out what is happening behind the scenes, you have a better chance of relating to them.
4. Identify the CORRECT opportunities.
   • Choose your battles carefully
5. Be willing to innovate.
   • How can you mold what you do, to meet your clients needs?
   • Things will change; be willing to change with them.

I enjoyed Jess’ talk quite a bit. I thought that he could have gone a little bit further with some of his ideas, but I definitely took a few things away.

An interesting point to mention, is that Jess was also a very nice guy, and extremely approachable. I subscribe to his blog, and I would strongly recommend others to do the same.

Unlimited Microsoft Bar Tab

The second evening of CanUX was extremely interesting also. at around 10:00 we headed down to the pub. David Crow, who calls himself an instigator and an entrepreneur, but is also a UX advisor/evangelist for Microsoft, had an open bar tab for everyone at the conference.

I ended up having a great conversation with David about some of his past ventures, and experiences with start up companies. He had some great suggestions about career direction, and improvement. He is an amazing source of information. and I would consider his blog a must read to anyone who is at all interested in the Canadian UX community.

I’ll be posting Part III of CanUX 2007 tomorrow.

This past weekend I attended CanUX 2007 at The Banff Center in Banff, Alberta. Much thanks to Karyn Zuidinga at Analytic Design Group! CanUX is the annual Canadian User Experience Workshop that brings together UX professionals/seekers from all over the country.

The atmostphere of the Banff Center was not what I expected at all. I thought that it would feel quite corporate, and even cold, but to my surprise, it actually felt more like college life, or when I attended summer camp as a child. Most of the buildings have a rough wood finish (I guess I should have known, it is Banff after all), and there is couches everywhere to just sit around and talk. The fact that there is a dining hall, conference area, and a hotel - all within walking distance also contributed to the campus feel. The major difference between CanUX and my summer camp experience was the pub… we didn’t have one at summer camp.

For me, personally, the weekend started off a little slow and sluggish: My Winnipeg Blue Bombers lost the Grey Cup to the Saskatchewan Rough Riders. However, the next day I tried to put it behind me and move on with life.

By the end of the weekend I was fully engaged and enjoying myself. I learned a lot of things, and met a lot of great people.

This post is going to be the first part of three separate posts about CanUX 2007.

Stay tuned for all the lessons that I learned!!!

I am currently working on an online application, that is geared toward helping musicians and their managers manage their band more efficiently and affectively. I have code-named this project “Murray”.

For those of you who aren’t familiar with Flight of the Conchords, they are a folk-comedy duo from New Zealand. The great thing about these guys, is that HBO decided to make a fictitious self-titled sitcom about their band. My co-worker Greg Bell and I accidentally discovered the show this summer while on a business trip to Seattle. Needless to say, we completely fell in love with them, and haven’t missed a show yet.

Anyway, to get on with my story: in the HBO series, they have a band manager named Murray. Murray is extremely organized. He takes attendance at meetings, he organizes all of their gigs for them, and even takes them on sight-seeing tours.

And so, I decided to name (or rather, code-name) my online band management application after the best band manager in the world!

The thought of Murray came to fruition when I was in a band, and we were struggling to get ourselves organized. We tried many different methods and software, but nothing fit very well. That’s when I realized that there was a real need for this kind of thing. We weren’t the only band that couldn’t get our shit together.

When I came up with the idea for Murray, I really wanted to do it right - from the ground up. So, I started with a competitive analysis, just to see what was out there for band management software. The results were actually quite stunning: there is absolutely nothing good!! I spent a few weeks just playing around with some of the software that is currently out there, and found myself ever-more excited to get started on Murray.

My problem is that I like to rush into things, and I really didn’t want to do that on this project. So, I decided to put together a survey, to ask musicians how they keep track of all their shows, sessions, rehearsals, etc., their current methods, and what they would need in a piece of software. I sent it out to every music contact that I have, and got some great feedback.

I tried to take everything to heart, and come up with the best possible solution.

I’m currently working on the sitemap, trying to develop the basic structure of the site. I might also throw a card sort in there just to make sure I’m on the right track.

After that comes wireframes, and then design. Then, I’m going to be developing Murray using Ruby on Rails.

You can expect to see Murray in beta at the end of March.

I was in Manitoba for a friends wedding this weekend.

As I was driving through the automobile city (aka: Steinbach), I saw a ‘99 Rav4. I decided to take it for a little test drive, and sort of accidentally fell in love with it. The dealership was asking a fair price for it, but i just didn’t want to buy a vehicle in Manitoba. But, the salesman was pretty sure that he could sell this thing to me, so he told me to make an offer that I thought was fair.

Since I wasn’t too keen on driving home to Vancouver from Manitoba (24 hr drive), I offered him a ridiculously low offer. Long story - short, they took my offer, and i bought it.

I ended up meeting some people in the wedding party from Bellingham, which is only an hour and a bit away from Vancouver, and I suckered them into also cancelling their flights, and making the trip with me. To my surprise, a 24 hour road trip with two complete strangers couldn’t have been any more fun!

radiohead has a new album out. you can download it for free, or choose to pay by donation.

the website is shite, and way too confusing, but the album is amazing and worth the frustration (the spelling is horrid!). certain songs remind me a lot of Thom Yorke’s solo album. it’s probably because he wrote a lot of them.

i’ve been reading some radiohead fan blogs, and it’s funny how everyone is making such a big deal of them giving their album away for donation. i know plenty of artists that have been doing this for years (myself included). now that a band as big as radiohead does it, everyone takes notice. it only makes sense, i guess. i mean they have the means to promote it, and even if they didn’t, people would still find out.

another artist to check out, who gives his music away for free is brad sucks. he does it a bit differently; you can only download his album for free, but if you want to you can order a cd for 10 bucks. i kind of like his method, because his music is easily accessible (much easier to download than radiohead’s), but if you want something to hold, then you can - at a cost (because it costs him to make the cd’s).

i’ve been giving my music away for free, or at cost, for about four years now, but lately i’ve been thinking of different methods, and ways to get my music to as many people as possible at as low a cost as possible. the easiest way is just a free download obviously, but certain people still like to hold a cd in their hands. i think it’s important to have ways for all people to get a hold of my music, and for some people that format is still cd.

i’m not trying to knock cd’s, but i can’t help but wonder how long before cd’s are history. what will take their place? will it be mp3 and other file formats? that’s my guess, but maybe there’s something bigger and better coming down the pipes? i don’t know.

anyway, i think the most important thing is making your music as widely accessible as possible. radiohead is doing it, and i’m sure there will be more artists to follow. i’ve talked to quite a few people who downloaded the album, and i’d say around half of them payed anyway.

i didn’t pay :)