Talks and conference

Our school and HCI faculty at IUB constantly keeps engaging us with industry in various forms. Erik Stolterman, Marty Siegel, Shaowen Bardzell, Jeff Bardzell, Eli Blevis keep updating about various industry developments related to HCI as well as some possible job/internship opportunities. As a part of these efforts Marty and Erik recently arranged for two talks. One was from Google and other from Adobe. Wow that sounds exciting. The individual representing Google was David Krane and the one representing Adobe was Brian Dils ( a former IU HCI/D student). Some of the key learnings from Google talk was how Google takes quick decisions in a matter of minutes, David was not asked too many user experience related questions as he is not a interaction designer at Google. However Adobe talk was characterized by UX related questions and Brian gave us some important insights in order to be a better designer. Some of the key points were:

1. If we work efficiently most of our work can be completed in less than the stipulated time, effective time management techniques were discussed when working as a interaction designer.
2. Fireworks as a effective tool was also discussed. Various prototyping tools like Photoshop, Illustrator were discussed, and emphasis was on Fireworks. Brian told about some of the places where Fireworks is most effective to use and some where it should not be used.
3. Design specifications as a important part of being designer were discussed. The book by Daniel M. Brown was suggested by Brian. The book is titled Communicating Design Developing Web Site Documentation for Design and Planning. I have started to use the book and it is important for designers to understand the proper specifications which have to be provided in order for most efficient working of the development teams.
4. Lastly Brian also spoke about the importance of programming for interaction designers. It is not expected for us to be hard-core computer science engineers but we are expected to know how things work and sometimes according to need we may also be required to code. So It's good to know some coding.

Inspired by talk by Brian. I decided to Attend the two day Flex and Fusion conference sponsored by Adobe at our campus in Bloomington. It was interesting conference, I attended beginner level workshop's for Cold fusion and Flash catalyst. Thanks Adobe for the sponsorship. It was exciting to learn new things. Will continue to hone these skills.