UX: Making Web Sites People Want to Use

Newsflash: Your web sites are ugly and hard to use. Well-muscled, fully-grown men with goatees, risque motorcycle tattoos, and heads shaved by broken beer bottles are reduced to blubbering like a babies when they try to navigate that tangled morass of spaghetti you call an interface. Iron-willed, wrinkled, war-hardened emergency room nurses named Brunnhilde who have viewed and treated the most gruesome injuries known to man hide their eyes in disgust when they glimpse your grotesquely dissonant layout. Dude, there's only one thing that can make Chuck Norris cry - your web site.

Face it. You're stuff's a mess. But there's a solution, it's called UX, look into it ... by coming to this meeting. We've got experts that'll show you how to beautify, simplify, and ergonomify your sad attempts at web perfection while simultaneously making you a better looking, more intelligent, and an all around more magnificent human being. In the past we've shown you how to make web sites, now we'll show you how to make web sites that people actually want to use.

We filled all of the speaker slots in record time. Your entertainers and educators for the evening will be:

Jason Swett (@jasonswett (https://twitter.com/#!/jasonswett)) - Usability Testing
It can sometimes be difficult for developers to get customers to communicate their business needs and there's often a woeful disparity between what the developer delivers and what the customer actually needed. Through usability testing, you can help ensure that your product matches the customer's needs and that your customer will actually be able to use the product.

John Hwang (http://tavon.org/) (@tavon (https://twitter.com/#!/tavon)) - Agile and UX
Why & how to incorporate UX practices within your Agile process.

Kedron Rhodes (http://www.kedronrhodes.com) (@kedronrhodes (https://twitter.com/#!/kedronrhodes)) - Taming Application UX with a UX Library
Application design requires consistent visual and response paradigms, which can be difficult for a team keep track of in Agile design and development. One solution that I’ve found extremely beneficial for large applications is the UX Library.

Joe Johnston (http://www.merhl.com/) (@merhl (https://twitter.com/#!/merhl)) - The Power of Sketching
See how some sketching techniques can greatly speed up and improve the UX design process.