4 things I’m looking forward to seeing at EuroIA
EuroIA in Rome is only a couple of weeks away, and I’ve been rifling through the programme planning what I want to see whilst I am there. Here are four talks that I’m particularly looking forward to.
“Helping businesses to solve a wicked problem: Getting profits from customer experience design” - Peter J. Bogaards
Profits. Proving ROI. Two things that have not always been foremost in the work that I’ve done at some organisations - the BBC and the Guardian - but which have dominated other places I’ve worked to the exclusion of all else. I think I’ve been following Peter’s stuff on the web for almost as long as I’ve been on the web. That’s a wicked combination.
“RITE: Testing and a Business Driver” - James Kalbach & Carola Weller
James and Carola will be talking about Rapid Iterative Testing and Evaluation, with their source material being work for a major client. It is a method that involves getting designers, product managers and business stakeholders to work together. As ever, one of the things most likely to attract me to a talk is the inclusion of these lines in the abstract description: “We’ll share the difficulties we encountered and how to overcome them.”
“An agronomist’s unexpected path to UX Design” - Raffaella Roviglioni
A complete change of pace. The promise of a personal story about how starting with Agricultural Sciences studies eventually led Raffaella to become a UX designer. With my own interest in how people enter the profession manifesting itself in helping to run LDNIA and teaching “So you think you want to be a UXer?”, I’m looking forward to this story of personal development.
“What users don’t understand about their iPhone” - Hermann Hofstetter & Gregor Urech
This talk promises to look at one of the sacred cows of the UX world - admitting that *whisper* sometimes iOS isn’t actually the be-all-and-end-all of usability. Apple fanboys like to argue that everything that emerges from One Infinite Loop is totally intuitive. But I’ve watched people struggling to use the devices, and I’m hoping that Hermann and Gregor will furnish me with further examples based on research.
Join me there
There are still spaces available to join us in Rome. On the second day of the conference I’ll be presenting “IA in the touch screen era”, a talk looking at how the proliferation of touch screen devices has changed the way that I work and the deliverables that I produce. You can also still sign up for my workshop, which takes place the day before the conference starts - “Responsive IA”.
And I’m not looking forward to...
...narrowly missing out on the chance to see Roma-Sampdoria on the Wednesday night - I’ve managed to get a flight that arrives in Rome too close to the kick-off time to be able to get from the airport to the stadium. Bugger...