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Teaching in Chicago, May 17-18

I've been remiss in letting folks know that I'm teaching a new Adaptive Path workshop in Chicago on May 17-18. I've been spending a lot of time developing "Beyond Usability 2.0: The Four Cornerstones of Successful Digital Product Design" (that's a mouthful), with the goal to create an event that teaches the essential methods that every member of a product team should know (not just the designers).

Attendees will learn methods and principles for getting Company Insight, conducting User Research, designing Information Architecture, and developing Interaction Design. While the last two might seem like the purview of the design team, I believe that everyone should understand the basics of these methods, and the reality is that many non-designers have to practice information architecture and interaction design because no one else in their organization is stepping up to do so.

If you use the promotional code FOPM, you'll receive 15% off the price.

I mean, look at all the bullet points we promise you on that workshop page!

You will learn how to:

• Get the most out of your stakeholder discussions
  
• Tie user experience design to concrete business value
  
• Prioritize project goals to achieve design focus
  
• Craft a great site intercept survey
  
• Recruit appropriate users for your interviews
  
• Conduct great interviews
  
• Analyze interview responses for maximum insight
  
• Analyze your existing information architecture
  
• Identify metadata that powers your experience
  
• Design new architectures according to user needs
  
• Classify and categorize your material for ease of findability
  
• Apply terms and labels that resonate with your audience
  
• Craft personas and scenarios that work
  
• Design user workflows that accommodate high degrees of interactivity
  
• Draw wireframes that communicate to all parts of the organization
  
• Critique interfaces to ensure usability
  
• Use prototypes to test ideas at various stages of readiness
  

Technorati Tags: adaptivepath, workshop

(Re-)Introducing Ryan Freitas

Long ago, at a Fray Day event, I met Ryan Freitas. I don't remember what we talked about; I do remember his URL at the time -- gangcandy.com. A name like that sticks.

Anyway, we drifted in and out of touch until late in 2004, when Adaptive Path brought him in to help out on some projects. We worked so well together, he decided to join the company, and for the last year or so has been a remarkable contributor to Adaptive Path's development.

The one thing everyone at Adaptive Path has been hounding him about is to get himself out there more. He regales us with trenchant insights on our internal mailing lists and company discussions, but he hasn't been sharing that wisdom with members of our wider community.

Thankfully, Ryan is now contributing to that as well. He's just published his first essay for Adaptive Path, on his experiences designing the new blog search engine Sphere.

More importantly, though, he has a blog. He's actually been posting to it for a little while. I call your attention to two posts: "Civility Doesn't Scale," where he calls into questions some of the design principles behind Wikipedia, and "making the future tangible," which is related to my post on artifacts from the future.

Ryan, it's great to see your voice out there, engaged in The Discourse. Now, keep at it!

(And, yes, I recognize the phrase "see your voice" is odd.)