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.