In February I’ll be traveling to Denver for the next Web Directions conference. Web Directions is officiallly described as “a highly focused conference and workshops for web designers, developers, UX and ID designers, and other web professionals whose day to day job is building web sites and web applications. It features two dozen world class experts, with a razor sharp focus on practical techniques and technologies you can use right away to build even better sites.”

I’ll be giving a talk on building empathetic corporate cultures and co-leading a workshop with Mark Trammell on setting up a user research program.

Beyond usability: How to build a culture of customer empathy

When everyone at your organization cares deeply about the customer experience you will build better, more inventive, and more delightful products. So how do get everyone to really care about and understand not just the usability but the overall experience of your products? Though it takes time, an empathetic corporate culture is not impossible to create and nurture.
In this session Juliette Melton will share several case studies in how to build a culture of empathy at your organization, including best practices for running usability tests, sharing web usage statistics, and developing user personas.

Know Your Users: How to start tomorrow with guerrilla user testing

Right now, someone, somewhere, is using something you’ve built. Who are they? Are they having a good time? It’s not that hard to find out.
User testing doesn’t have to be difficult or expensive, and shouldn’t only happen at the end of the product development cycle. The best and most useful research is distributed throughout the product lifecycle and can be done within a stone’s throw of your office using inexpensive tools. At this workshop, Juliette Melton and Mark Trammell will show you how to build an effective user testing program from scratch and how to keep it going over time.

Who is this workshop for?

This workshop is for those who want to understand how to learn about user experiences, including project/product managers, designers, and usability professionals.

What will you learn?

• A structured approach to building a user testing program
• Web analytics basics
• Surveying tips
• How to include coworkers in your research
• How to perform task analysis
• Recruiting testing participants tips
• Best practices when sharing research findings

(Wondering about the spaceship I would land in Colorado? Full lyrics here. Anyone who lived in Colorado as a kid will probably know it by heart.)

• Have a slide deck that is too long for your allotted time
• Use bad fonts with drop shadows
• Use funny voices and occasionally sing
• Frantically wave your hands around
• Be sure to never credit your sources
• Talk a lot about your credentials
• Use only really obscure examples of whatever you’re talking about
• Avoid eye contact with the audience
• Bring up lots of anecdotes about times when you were smarter than other people
• Be sure to not leave any time for questions at the end
• Apologize for your presentation

(Recently compiled by me, Mark, Kevin, and Coley at an In-N-Out Burger in Daly City.)

I’m looking forward to seeing this in its finished state. The filmmaker is a student and is looking for donations to keep the project rolling.

The ever-observent Killface of Frisky Dingo is displeased that a map is missing some essential information. “Oh, here’s a good idea — indicate north! Otherwise, it’s not technically a map. It’s just a drawing.”