IDUX

I will be speaking at the Designer to Developer Workflow (D2W) Conference in Kansas City this July 14-16 near the Power & Light District. This is a great conference for those of us working on multi-disciplinary teams and who are often moving among design, prototypes, and code.

I will be teaching one all-day class and giving two presentations:

• On Thursday, July 14 I will be teaching an all-day seminar “Introduction to Adobe Fireworks CS5″  that takes students through a series of hands-on projects to introduce the most important features of Adobe Fireworks CS5 and how it can be used for wireframes, prototypes, visual design, and asset and image preparation and optimization.
• On Friday, July 15 from 1.00p to 2.00p I will be giving a presentation “Design 101 with Adobe Fireworks for Developers.”
• On Friday, July 15 from 4.40p to 5.40p I will be talking about prototyping in “It’s OK to Throw it Away: Prototypes as a Collaboration Tool.”

I will be at the conference for all three days, so come join me at one of the best conferences for designers and developers this summer!

In a new series of studies, published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Carter and Gilovich (2010) explore six reasons why material purchases are less satisfying than experiential purchases, and what we can do about it.

Six Psychological Reasons Consumer Culture is Unsatisfying — PsyBlog.

This research suggests that thinking of material purchases in experiential terms helps banish dissatisfaction. The implications for designing online retail experiences may be to help customers see themselves using the product and focusing more on experiences with the product than on research and comparison of features and details vs. other similar products.

Brief article and checklist from LukeW for helping to determine when a social design and goal should be considered:

Luke W’s Social Engagement Checklist

The checklist is based on:

• Susan Weinschenk’s UX Lisbon presentation on Neuro Web Design.
• Stephen Anderson’s Serious Play presentation.
• IA Summit presentation on Online & Real Life Social Networks.
• Christian Crumlish’s presentation Designing the Social In.

What Makes Them Click – Applying Psychology to Understand How People Think, Work, and Relate

What Makes Them Click is a blog by Susan Weinschenk, Ph.D. for people who want to learn how to apply psychology to understand how people think, work, and relate. The blog focuses on applying the latest research in psychology to information, interaction, and experience design.

In “The Psychologist’s View of UX Design” she writes about applying psychological theories and research to design.

As an applied psychologist myself, it is good to see research and theory being used to improve design for digital experiences. Oh, and I also got my start in psychology at Penn State!