Ultra Light User Experience

July 2009 Entrepreneurs Forum:

Ultra Light User Experience

Topics:

• What is User Experience (UX)? Is UX a one-off task or an ongoing process for a startup?
• What are the components of UX and the related topic of User Interface (UI) design?
  • Information Architecture (IA) / Interaction Design (ID)
    • Objectives: To define the behavior of products and systems that a user can interact with
    • Activities:
    • Tools: Visio, Omnigraffle, SmartDraw, SiteXpert, Axure, iPlotz
    • Output: Functional specification, process flow diagram, sitemap, wireframes
  • User Research and Testing
    • Objectives: Efficiency, accuracy, recall, and emotional response
    • Activities: Stakeholder interviews, user interviews, surveys, observations, card sorting, web analytics, prototyping, usability testing, eye-tracking studies, etc
    • Tools: UserVue, Ethnio, video camera
    • Output: Recommendations for revisions to IA and VD
  • Visual Design (VD) / Graphic Design (GD)
    • Objectives: Create a visual representation of ideas and messages
    • Tools: Adobe Suite (Photoshop, Illustrator, Dreamweaver)
    • Output: Style guide (text), graphics/images, stylesheets (CSS)
• Why should usability be a priority for startups? What proportion of a project's time and budget can an ultra-light entrepreneur justify spending on UX?
• How is the effectiveness of UX measured? How can an entrepreneur quantify the differences in a system before and after some investment in UX?
• What can an entrepreneur do himself and under what circumstances should he seek external help designing his site's UX?
• How should entrepreneurs go about finding this help? How much should we expect to spend? What should we do if we can't afford any external UX consulting?
• How have successful "ultra light" startups addressed UX in the past and what can we learn from them? What are examples of effective UX designs produced on a shoestring budget? What techniques were used to maximize ROI on the time and money invested?

Moderator:

• Allen Ackerman, Founder and CEO of A-List Placement, and The Hire Syndicate

Panelists (alphabetic order):

• Whitney Hess, Independent user experience designer
• Alex Kirtland, Partner at UsableMarkets
• Karen McGrane, Senior Partner at Bond Art + Science
• David Sansone, Director of User Experience at TBWA \ NY

Wednesday, July 01, 2009 from 6:30 PM - 9:00 PM (ET)

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Ultra Light Startups

Ultra Light Startups is an online and in-person community of entrepreneurs who share advice, contacts, and best practices for launching tech startups as quickly and cheaply as possible.  Of particular interest to the group are topics such as:

• Innovative Monetization techniques - advertising, affiliates, subscriptions, memberships, marketplaces, lead-gen, etc).
• Social Media Marketing - social networks, Twitter, online video, etc.
• Off-The-Shelf and Open Source Platforms content management systems and development environments.
• Virtual Companies - distributed teams, freelancing, offices-of-convenience and outsourcing.
• Cloud Computing - low-overhead, flexible, on-demand infrastructure.
• Social and Mobile as marketing, delivery and monetization platforms.

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